Agreed, but we have to trust the instances we keep accounts on. Trust is subjective, but I certainly wouldn't trust a government ran instance for anything other than an outlet for information originating from the owning government.

If I run a private instance or know the maintainer of another, then I can have greater confidence in the security/privacy implementations.

[–] fkn@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would trust most government instances more than most of the private instances. Would I trust them not to harvest all of that info? Absolutely not. Would I trust them to not masquerade as me? Way more. Governments have way more to lose by being caught.

[–] JustinAngel@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've spent quite a bit of time as a penetration tester and one of the first things we do once we recover credentials is check for validity against online accounts known to be good for a given user. We do that because it simulates attackers and government operators alike. It's a guarantee that free credentials will be abused in one manner or another when they're available to government entities.

The obvious control for this is to maintain a unique password for each account but that's not always feasible for users due to myriad conditions.

[–] fkn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't say they wouldn't be abused. I said they wouldn't be impersonated.

[–] JustinAngel@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would I trust them to not masquerade as me?...

Masquerading is literally the term used for this.

[–] fkn@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Exactly? I'm confused. Did you not understand my position?