this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Privacy

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Are there any reasonable privacy benefits for creating temporary accounts to make posts on Lemmy? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I noticed the other day that the majority of the content on [email protected] are made by accounts that are deleted after making some posts. Most often no comments are made by these burner accounts, but sometimes they will create a new separate account to respond to comments.

Is there any real privacy benefits for this over something like having a single separate account you post only images and no text posts?

Is there a tool that facilities creating short-term accounts like this?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Kinda, but not really. And only if you are creating and logging into these accounts via a method that conceals your personal IP address. Without that, at best, you are simply obscuring your identity.

And even if you are properly concealing your ip address, If you interact with the rest of us enough, a profile could still be built up using writing or art styles as the identifier, eventually becoming detailed enough to identify the user.

Jk Rowling and Steven King both had alts that were linked to them that way. And it wasn’t a government that did so, but their fans.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure, but that's based on text posts. If all you do is post images, would there really be anything to track?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If it's actual art (digital or no), yes. Each person is distinct even if they are faking someone else. With enough data, a profile can be built. It's how the real artist behind fake original paintings can be Identified.

People are just really bad at random, and are not precise enough to physically copy someone else.

Digital copies are another matter, but might still be traceable with a large enough dataset.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I'm just talking about sharing memes, for example