Well, a random creep messaged me on reddit, after a few messages exchanged he said he looked up my private profile on google and read through my posts. Outside of how angry I was at him for doing that, it surprised me that google does this, It even gave an AI OVERVIEW of who I am on reddit, (I have posted my age and country on reddit, and a few other things ofc, but the others describe what im into and what I do on reddit, not tied to any personal info, so its just my age and country really) But what the fuck google? I know you can look up people in places like ghostddit, so I wasn’t expecting my profile to be 100% private either, but it’s crazy you can find it straight on google. I guess its slowly coming to a point than ANYTHING you do online is gonna visible for EVERYONE. Yes we were already being surveilled, but this and then the discord thing with messages from servers showing up on google too? I’m pissed off man. (I know lemmy is not private either, but I don’t have a google account tied to here, the one email I used to register didn’t ask me for phone verification so its not as bad to hang out here, might look into matrix later)
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posts on a publicly visible forum
upset people can read their posts
redditors.png
Was pretty naive of me, but outside of that, don’t you think it’s a little scummy that they put in “X likes to keep their posts hidden, but check out their stats to learn more about them.”? And even here where it says you content is visible in communities “Profile curation only applies to your profile and your content stays visible in communities. Mods of communities you participate in and redditors whose profile posts you engage with can still see your full profile for moderation.”
It’s written in such a way that makes you think “okay if I post somewhere my post will be seen by people from that community or admins” not “your content will be discoverable by anyone who types in your username on reddit without even needing to log in, and also on google”
Like if you can just do that, what even is the point of having a toggle for your posts and comments to be hidden? For people to go through the inconvenience of typing for 4 seconds in the search up top? I think it’s purposely deceitful.
Life lesson: everything you put online could be exposed at some point. And the responsible admins can always (except for correctly encrypted things where you might need to trust the did this) see everything.
So the best course of action will always be data minimization.
(disclaimer: I’ve administered a lot myself and of course everyone should adhere to a legal framework and moral code. And of course you need your time to do our job.)
Yes but one thing is for people to see what you are putting in, which is not that bad unless you are putting personal info in, the one im more concerned about is your posts being tied to you as a person, like if im random4673 in a platform and people read I’m into some weird niche bdsm stuff I don’t care at all, thing is if that can be traced back to you.
Uh, it’s not even private on Reddit.
In the search bar you can type Author:(username) and it will show you literally everything they’ve ever said or posted, even if it’s hidden. And it has more sort options than the official profile page too.
PSA lemmy is not safe from this.
PSA Lemmy does not have private profiles, so there’s no illusion of that here.
Bold of you to assume that just because something is logicaly obvious that many people wont make illusions about it 😉
- Never use identifiable information, or photos of yourself on social media
- Use a different email address for each platform
- Use a different username for each platform
- Don’t ever cross the streams
- Delete accounts, and start again every so often
- Shouldn’t have to do any of the above, but…
Thanks, I do this already pretty much, but I think I gotta stop using gmail that much and switch to a different email provider, any recommendations outside of proton?
I would stop using gmail altogether, it has only taken me 10 years to convince my girlfriend to do that.
I’m no expert, so take these with a grain of salt, but I am using zoho, tuta, aster, secria, and murena
You probably don’t have to be too fussy if some of them are only used to sign up to 1 social media platform each.
if they don’t have phone verification or anything like that i can just make a bunch of them and keep them in a lil notebook under the desk lol, no one’s hacking into that
Zoho probably has phone verification, I have had that one for the longest. The rest are most likely phone free, that would have been a part of the reason why I picked them.
What is a private profile? Anyway, everything you post is public, that’s the purpose of a forum
In reddit you can click on an option that will hide all your posts and comments in the platform from people checking out your profile (it will be blank basically) while there are some tools to view this anyways, you gotta know they exist and look for them, however, now it seems you can straight up google someone’s reddit username, and even if they chose the option to hide their posts, google will show every single one of them, im not that pissed at the guys that manage sites like ghosddit, but for a big company to do that is way worse, seems they are slowly gonna stop caring and push surveillance faster and faster, hell 2027 and IDs on OS is getting closer and closer, whatever happens with that, the intentions are clear, they’ll keep on pushing this, and they are slowly not even trying to hide that fact
That private post/comment setting has always been an illusion. You don’t need a tool. You can just search the username on reddit to circumvent that setting entirely.
pff, why even have it then? what a joke… Seems I’ll have to try and study up on alternatives all around and limit what I send anyways, man I miss the old internet
Pretty sure Reddit added it as bot accounts were complaining there were too easily identified by their history. Also probably something about harassment of people by going though all their posts, but that had been happening for years before the feature was added.
All my reddit accounts are throwaway. I always start the new year with a new email alias for a new reddit account. This way it limit the amount of data that they can use to build a profile.
I also avoid over sharing and talking about myself over there.
Bloody hell time to delete the old profile
I have nothing on there that’s identifiable other than my current age and country, then the rest is just hobbies or weird reddits I’m in, nothing that can be traced back to me, but still, I’m kinda pissed it’s not more clear that it works like this. Like you have a “hide posts and comments” toggle that seems to serve absolutely no purpose.
You should be thanking that person that they made you aware of the information that is out there about you.
I kinda am to be honest, best to find out before any personal info was shared than after!
Jesus titty fucking Christ you posted shit on the internet and someone FOUND IT!?!1
It’s not the fact they did find it, I was aware of sites like ghosddit (as i said before) that allow you to do the same thing, im just pissed its on google, so basically anyone without a brain can do it, like ofc we know google is not a good company but still, its a combination of things, lemmy doesn’t lie saying your shit is private then selling your info to google so it appears on the results.
