Although i am quite a lurker in Lemmy, i don’t have the time to be an active contributor, nor i wish to give away too much personal information nor i want to add an unnecessary addiction into my life, which is why i don’t maintain a permanent account. However i do periodically have questions that I feel like only communities from Lemmy would be able to answer to my satisfaction, which is why i create burner accounts in my private window which i close after i am done with it.
But after creating many such accounts for this purpose, i feel like i am not doing it properly. I feel guilty abandoning accounts that take up space in servers of instances which are constantly fighting against spam and DDOS attacks; it feels like i am participating in the attack too. However i believe i should not delete the posts, for it may come useful for me in the future and for other people browsing the communities.
What methods should i adopt to further make my use of burner accounts in Lemmy more beneficial to me (in terms of anonymity and future account creations) as well as others (instances in terms of spam and members in terms of posts/comments)? Should I maintain a single account or permanently delete these accounts once i’m done with them?
For context, I use a VPN and Tor Browser and a disposable email for instances requiring email for account creation.
If you don’t want to abandon an account after a single post then only thing as others have mentioned is self displicine in what you share. General topics like inquiries on games, tech, and movies are probably of no special interest.
But, stuff like I’m from Atlantis and I am of noble lineage of the lobster clan who is part of an alliance to overthrow the clan of Corrals is too much info to be giving. Basically don’t share stuff you wouldn’t be comfortable people knowing in real life.
If there is this much paranoia though I think just lurking is the way to go, and keeping only an account for asking questions that is worded as unassuming as possible. Maybe even have AI rephrase what you wanted to ask.
As an admin, accounts are quite cheap and we get thousands of them just through federation. They’re just a row in a database of tens of thousands of rows.
I wouldn’t worry about it, the only issue is if you make them random strings of numbers you may find it difficult to get past some spam fighting measures. But apart from that, I wouldn’t worry about it. This post as a whole with the comments probably takes like 10 accounts worth of storage.
If you are a human posting, you’re contributing to the community. It shouldn’t matter if it’s your only or have X accounts that you use/don’t use. In general, ddos attacks are more timing related in combination with data quantity not just raw data, since a new user account doesn’t take up much space and neither does their posts (this isn’t 100% the case, but usually the case. Also haven’t read lemmy’s source code, just general discussion)
I don’t feel there is any harm in having several accounts spread out for whatever purposes. Compartmentalize it so that each user is distinct and keep the accounts. I think this is the best way to maintain privacy but also not create new accounts constantly. Pretty sure this is good enough to not expose yourself.
You can always donate your account to the privacy community and someone else will use it to post. Over time these accounts will have lits of different people sharing metadata and mixing the waters.
Im not saying to do this or not. Just that its an option. There used to be an add-on for this called bugmenot. The instance will likely have your IP for a while but you can always use a VPN/ TOR or a coffee shop if you feel you need to hide your IP.
