Hey guys, thanks to some of you I was able to set up my lemmy instance. Its working flawlessly. But here comes my new question:
From a security perspective, is it less secure and less anonymous this way, right? I mean with an account on any other instance you would be kinda insivisble if you use a VPN and a alias email without any trace back to yourself. But with an own instance anybody can check where is your server located, therefore you would be less anonym. Right?
depends, a server is just a server. Its more about how you setup your domain and secure your site. My domains are all anon and I run my servers through cloudflare. You don’t really see the actual server itself, just cloudflares gateway.
This is the way. I’m routed through cloudflare with private registration as well. The exposed IPs belong to Cloudflare and only they and I know where it goes after that.
I have the same setup. You just need to make sure the domain info is private when you first register it because if the whois history is cached somewhere and your info was public before then it can still be found.
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Thank you, now I’m getting to know cloudflare.At the moment there is some problem with a redirecting loop, but as I read itcould be a problem with my nginx config and https. Either way thank you
Make sure ssl is set to full or strict If using local certs as well. Want to skip local certs? Use cloudflared
It really depends, honestly. If your instance is hosted behind a tunnel that is served through some sort of IP farm somewhere without jurisdiction of your own country, and that it doesn’t trace back to you in any way shape or form, then it’s definitely better. But if you are just hosting on your personal IP address, and with a domain name that is yours and registered to your name, you are definitely ‘exposed’ in that way. Up to you how to deal with that though.
Your actual question has been answered but I want to add that it’s also a boon to be public in terms of adding legitimacy and weight behind what you comment and post. I stake my real name and identity behind what I post. Basically the foundational idea behind Facebook before it turned into the beast it is today.
You can make it private only. And have it not block all of the federation except few. Server location is not necessarily your location. Just make sure you have log rotate and keep as few logs on the file system as possible: and use nicknames and nothing personal.
You can obfuscate your location with a reverse proxy. The biggest problem with self-hosting is what can get compromised if they get access inside your network as opposed to a VPS. Keeping up to date on what is publically facing for vulnerabilities starts to become a chore.
The only way that you would get caught is when the government is involved, unless somehow you have acquired the server or the domain using crypto.
