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Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users: Leak show feds tracking anti-ICE Reddit users like "Budget-Chicken-2425" (www.kenklippenstein.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 57 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I used reddit for over a decade, but I was never willing to buy reddit gold or support it because I didn't trust any site where I shared my political opinions to have those opinions tied with by real name or any other billing info. Same with discord. At least with lemmy, you can support it without tying it to your account.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    I tend to think that -- for myself for sure but probably most other people -- after a decade plus on Reddit, you've likely said and posted enough stuff that somebody could follow the breadcrumbs back to you. Theyd have to really want to and it would take a lot of reading your posts, but it could probably be done. Anonymity doesn't exist without a vpn, and even then you're probably still identifiable. Don't say, post or do anything on the internet that youre not willing to defend/pay for in real life.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I've always isolated my username from irl stuff and I don't make any social media posts from my irl stuff. You'd have to be very interested in me specifically and I've always tried to be slightly less noisy then the background noise.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah, but the website owners have access to a lot more information than is just available publicly. You probably could be identified by a fed if reddit gave them that information.

    You might not be worth the effort, especially since most other people would probably be less effort to track down. But that doesn't mean it isn't possible.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    especially since most other people would probably be less effort to track down.

    ding ding ding

    I have politically active friends who are supposedly privacy minded blasting their takes on facebook and complaining when they get banned for inciting violence. Most people are terrible at this and the algos the feds use probably aren't that great. I'm more likely to get grabbed randomly.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago*

    Also, other sites on the Net can collate links posted to reddit and the users and times that they were posted with users accessing pages on their own site. For example, if you've posted a sufficient number of youtube links, youtube can possibly link your reddit account and youtube account, say, as belonging to the same person. Just about any popular site can link your reddit account with your IP address. And your facebook account with your IP address. Etc. And thereby link reddit accounts with facebook accounts in cases with long-lived IP addresses. If X is a scrapable site on which users with fixed pseudonyms can submit links and Y is a site popular enough and has enough content, then Y can collate user accounts on X with IP addresses. This is not to say anyone is doing this. There are not many sites that meet the criteria to be a Y. I would say it includes mainstream news sites. The authorities could compromise some of the Ys or create their own through astroturf and thereby link users on the Xs with IP addresses and then with location.

    These days, this might be a bit harder because reddit closed up when the AI companies started scraping. I don't know the situation with Facebook with regard to scraping. If it's scrapable, they've got your name linked to your reddit account.

    What I've said about reddit equally applies to lemmy, even more so because lemmy is open by principle.

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