this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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I suspect with a coordinated pool of posts or multiple comments on the same post, you could narrow that IP address down to an actual user account.
When a new comment is posted by a user, store, against their username, all IP addresses that visited since the last comment in that thread (by anyone). When a second comment is posted by a user, remove any IP addresses that don't appear in both lists.
I suspect you would have a very short list after two comments, and a single address after 3. It would also be extremely easy to both lure someone into viewing an image and bait them into multiple replies. Geolocate that IP and you know know vaguely where that user lives.
Time to make sure you're always on a VPN I guess.
You could also send the image through a DM if you want to find a particular user
Oh yeah, that'd be much less effort.
Even without that, once your Lemmy interests are sold/shared by IP address, they can be associated with your real identity as soon as you log in to a service that knows who you are.