RSS and Privacy
from goofus@lemmy.today to privacy@lemmy.ml on 11 Mar 22:29
https://lemmy.today/post/25388906

I am starting to use a RSS feed (Akregator). I intend to use it to follow youtube channels, and try to learn what else it can do. What kind of privacy issues should I be aware of? Are there settings I can use to improve privacy? I use a vpn, is there something else I should do?

#privacy

threaded - newest

catloaf@lemm.ee on 11 Mar 22:38 next collapse

Privacy from…?

goofus@lemmy.today on 11 Mar 23:58 collapse

The biggest issue would be YouTube fingerprinting my RSS browser. But I am trying to learn about privacy, so I don’t know anything.

bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net on 12 Mar 01:12 collapse

I’d be pretty shocked if the ad networks that spy on all of us care about RSS. You’re going to look like a bot, noise they actively try to ignore. The relevant piece of data to them would be a clickthru to the website (which they would then probably care about attributing to RSS)

skrlet13@feddit.cl on 11 Mar 23:56 next collapse

Check for protections for Youtube, RSS itself is privacy-friendly.

furrowsofar@beehaw.org on 12 Mar 05:18 next collapse

The big advantage of RSS and Youtube is you do not have to login to follow you channels. Your only touching what you need and soyour footprint is a lot smaller. I just started using RSS for youtube a few months ago and like it much better.

MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml on 12 Mar 12:12 next collapse

Title, quick summary and image URL are in the RSS/Atom file itself (a XML file), everything more is done by the app parsing the webpage. But i think there’s no problem with privacy.

MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml on 12 Mar 12:15 next collapse

About the VPN, if you do it for privacy, it’s almost useless for Youtube and you trust your browsing history to the VPN provider.

ramenu@lemmy.ml on 12 Mar 13:01 collapse

Why is it useless for YouTube?

MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml on 12 Mar 14:32 collapse

Well, not useless per se, if you don’t log in. But troublesome.

ramenu@lemmy.ml on 12 Mar 13:03 collapse

I suggest getting RSS feeds from your subscriptions from Invidious. This way you won’t directly connect to Google’s servers.