this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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What is your email used for when signing up to Lemmy? Is it just for password reset?

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[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 year ago

We use it as an (imperfect) speed bump for spammers. Also for password resets. That's about it.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 17 points 1 year ago

Password reset and notifications.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I assume it can be seen by admins?

I trust my admins, but I still used a forwarding service because there's always a risk of an attack exposing data. Unless there's some other security there I don't know about

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes us instance admin can pull the email address form local users.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you pull for foreign users? Curious what other federated instances can see

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 7 points 1 year ago

select person.id,name,local,local_user.email from person join local_user on person.id = local_user.person_id where person.id =2;

id | name | local | email

----+-----------+-------+---------------------

2 | BlueEther | t | firstname@lastname.nz

Email is only available for local users and only if filled in on the signup form

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There’s no interface for it, but the emails can be extracted from the database, no doubt.

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 1 points 1 year ago
[–] ronalicious@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use my irl Gmail for pretty much everything at this point. I just don't give a f anymore. I do have a domain I keep in my back pocket just in case. but IMHO if the man cares enough to know about me , the man is gonna know

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For me that's the case for most things.

For Lemmy, especially as more communities pop up and I make alts, I'd want to keep things private. I don't want my personal email address tied to comments exploring topics personal to me, or even my friends/family. I won't ask about a problem a close friend is having unless I can guarantee I'm not outing information they don't want public.

If any admin can see the email, that opens up the risk of an admin being malicious or incompetent with how the data is secured. This is a problem with any service, but one to keep in mind for federated stuff.

Obviously with accounts where I use my name, I'd prefer of my email was hidden but I don't care as much if it gets dumped.