Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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how private are RSS feeds? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by lemmyrolinga@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

How could anyone find out which sites are you following using an RSS feed? And I mean in a broad way: can the site track you? Can ISP? Network managers?

Let's say you want to follow a bunch of political sites that you don't want to be easily attached to, is RSS a good way to do it? Are there extra precautions to take?

My first thought would be that it's the same as using any other browser, so not a great way to be private. Am I wrong?

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[–] drkt_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Why do you think an RSS feed can't sit on a CDN?

[–] Mensh123@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What I meant were CDNs such as Google's providing common resources like fonts or JS libraries.

[–] FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also, by using RSS you skip all visual garbage and more tracking that you might have to exposed.

PS: I dislike Google Fonts. It is the most insidious way that Google can track people as they are used everywhere and in almost all sites and even by some FOSS applications.

[–] Mensh123@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Have you heard of Local CDN? It provides at least some common things.

[–] FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago

On, I have and have used it. Thank you.

But as far as the host server that you hit is comcerned, whether you block the fonts via uBlock or do not fulfill the server request via Local CDN, they will still use it to profile you, because you tag yourself in the minority of users in the world that do not hit the Google font servers. And Google knows this.
Since even most adblock users still do not block fonts or other assets like this. Albeit I do as I use uBlock on Medium mode, including fonts. And I dropped using Local CND as to minimise my extensions footprint.

The main gain would be for the site's aesthetics as you host some assets locally, but from a privacy perspective, you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Albeit you are damned a little bit less if you do. LOL