you are (still) missing my point - but i might be wrong as well (i am mot too familiar with ActivityPub).
my point is not that my public posts are in fact public and can be (and probably are) mined through unknown parties, but that instance owners have even more, probably more valuable info, like IP addresses from which not just geolocation but also wake times, device usage patterns and other gnarly stuff could be extracted, that could - together with other personalized surveillance info (like the usual adware stuff) - be aggregated to give a bigger picture.
just showing (as you did) that one can get some info about me through my (public) actions does not refute the point that instance owners have access to more, not-so-public information
but that instance owners have even more, probably more valuable info, like IP addresses from which not just geolocation but also wake times, device usage patterns and other gnarly stuff could be extracted, that could - together with other personalized surveillance info (like the usual adware stuff) - be aggregated to give a bigger picture.
I have IP behind the geolocation. How do you think that I know the geolocation? It’s an IP lookup. My interface that I shown in the image just doesn’t publish it because I don’t care personally. What I use that service for is simply to track where sensitive emails/documents go. Not to track lemmy. I don’t need specific resolutions. Just to know if they leak outside of what I expected.
Device patterns? The app you use is the app you use. That would be given away via your browser header. I also collect that with the tracking image. Just once again. Not shown in the graph cause I don’t care to track it personally (I’m only doing this as an example, not to actually aggregate data).
If you use lemmy over the web browser, browsers don’t really give up that much information unless you’re google themselves. In which case apparently chrome gives up a boatload of information to google’s domains.
not-so-public information
You’d have to give me an example of any of what you’re referencing. I can collect IP, web headers, access times, and if I tag enough pages or mark the image as non-cacheable could even see multiple views/accesses (you see views higher than actual visitors) I can track your movement across all of the fediverse.
that one can get some info about me through my (public) actions
Simply “viewing” the page (which pulls the image and is not necessarily “public”) is a direct rebuttal to obtaining data that isn’t “public”.
I’ve addressed the points you’ve brought up. I run my own instance. I can collect just about everything in the DB tables I’ve seen without being logged into the instance with some external work.
Are you trying to get my point? If you have a specific item that you believe is stored on a lemmy server that you think isn’t possible to obtain. I’m all ears. otherwise I think this conversation is done. This kind of response is pointless and I’m not interested in continuing if you’re going to act like that.
The hardest thing to collect would be private messages, and login information (which is hashed btw, so even your server operator doesn’t really know it). But messages are plaintext and openly federated. All the other information is really really easy to collect through other means.
