I’ve just recently moved to Lemmy, and so far I’m enjoying it quite a bit. However, I’ve been thinking about the privacy issues whe DMing someone here.

Since this is a federated service, when you DM someone you have to trust both your server’s admin, as well as the recipient’s. Not that I particularly trusted reddit, but at least it was 1 corporation with (hopefully) some solid security procedures in place, and potential penalties for data breaches. Whereas in Lemmy, it might just be 2 random guys.

I’ve added an age key to my profile, in the hopes to make people aware of this issue. As well as giving them an option, if they wish to contact me privately.

I know, it’s not user friendly. But it’s the only way I could think of that wouldn’t rely on email + GPG. Does anyone know of a better solution?

EDIT: I also realise that not having signing capabilities might be an issue… So maybe reverting back to good ol’ GPG is a better option?

  • @Gsus4
    4•1 year ago

    isn’t XMPP what you’re asking for? I’m not a user, but I’m aware that these things exist, they just don’t catch on because it’s a nightmare to do federation and security all at once. Probably it will take some form of federated authentication ID, but then you have the problem of who manages that…

    • hiyaaaaa23
      2•1 year ago

      I’m no federation or csec expert but the big issue is storing the the user keys. Though maybe the keys could just be the user’s password. But then you have to trust that your instance isn’t stealing it.

      You could have them checksummed by the lemmy/kbin/mastodon devs, but then now you have to trust them.

      At some point you’d need a centralized authority, which is kinda against the whole point of the fediverse.