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it creates are potential privacy issues if you give out your real email address Is this the same class of privacy issue as, say, subscribing to a print journal
by bmj 6y ago
it creates are potential privacy issues if you give out your real email address
Is this the same class of privacy issue as, say, subscribing to a print journal that is delivered directly to your place of residence (as opposed to a post office box)? I think you could even argue that using anonymized email addresses for your newsletter subscriptions could be the digital equivalent of a PO box, right?
- t0astbread 6y agoI think we mean the same thing, yes. (See my response to a sibling about newsletter hosts building interest profiles[1].) The PO box analogy kinda falls apart unless you use a separate PO box per subscription but you're right, email aliases protect you from any kind of advertiser profiling. Feeds are just nice because they're simple HTTP requests so they don't have that problem in the first place (unless you're worried about IP-based tracking and don't use any kind of proxy). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26169411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26169411
- betwixthewires 6y agoI'd say, imagine that for material you want, you have to ask for it rather than someone just deciding to send you whatever they want to send you. RSS and Atom are basically ways to organize and automate requesting desired data on a schedule. This means that using these formats, nobody can send you junk that you don't want.