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?
I know this isn’t an answer but unless I’m using an end-to-end encrypted service like Element or Signal to communicate, I’m assuming anything I write in a DM will become public at some time. Given that, if it is something some sensitive, I will make sure to use one of those instead of the in-house DM.
Element’s an interesting one because it’s on the matrix protocol, which is already federated. You could, in theory, simply graft matrix onto any given activitypub instance and run all chat through that, though you’d need to get all the other activitypub instances to agree to do it the same way.
If you enter a matrix user name on your profile, Lemmy adds an extra button on your profile to “Send Secure Message”. Example: https://monero.town/u/shortwavesurfer
I don’t know if this behavior is default, or if you have to configure something for it, but I think it’s a nice way to bridge forum-like communities with chatrooms (matrix itself can be bridged with irc, discord, telegram).
I don’t know much about the available options, but aren’t we able to enter Matrix info in our bios? Or maybe that’s instance-specific?
I know nothing about Matrix though, other than that it’s an E2E thing.
There’s an option/field in Lemmy’s settings to put in a Matrix User ID, although I’ve had mine there and have no clue where it shows up. If I go to my profile, I can’t see it, unless I’m really overlooking it haha.
It probably doesn’t show when viewing your own profile, but yours shows two links:
Send Messagewhich links to sending a private message through lemmySend Secure Messagewhich links to sending a message through matrixAh that would make sense. That’s actually really cool that it even explicitly marks the Matrix option as the secure one too!
the problem I have with signal for talking to random people is I’d have to give them my phone number iirc