Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
It’s not just upvotes and downvotes. Instance admin also knows your email and can store your password in plaintext if they want to. It’s up to user to decide whether to trust the instance admin
I think you need to clarify how they can see the password. It’s not stored in plaintext, but when the user logs in, the server administrator can see the password in the HTTP post data if they log it in the lemmy sourcecode. All apps are subject to this and it’s why to have to trust the instance owner.
and also the reason not to reuse passwords
They store unencrypted passwords in the year of our lord 2023? Be this real?
This should definitely be mentioned when you’re creating an account. Also, how secure are usually lemmy instances?
This is not the case at all and the parent comment was not clear
How do you know that an admin has my plain text password? Typically passwords are stored hashed. Do Lemmy instances not do this?
I didn’t look at Lemmy’s source but I’m pretty sure it is hashed. The thing is, password is hashed in the database only to protect users in case database gets hacked. But a bad admin of the server can always just change the code and nobody would know. When it comes to websites, open source doesn’t provide any additional security, since everything that happens on the server is a black box. I’m not an expert on this though. Correct me if I’m wrong
If it’s hashed it’s impossible to see your password (hashing is a one way process, it’s not encrypted). However nothing prevents someone from running a modded instance if they want to harvest passwords.
They do, but since lemmy is open source they can store it before hashing it, just use basic security practices and use a password manager
Check this comment for details on Lemmy’s security. https://lemmy.world/comment/765991
TL;DR: Password security is fine. Server doesn’t get your plaintext password.
I didn’t read the source code too deeply, but it appears the server receives the password, and only then it is hashed. How does it work?
Is it option 1 or 2 (or other). If option 1 an evil admin can collect the password, or am I misinterpreting something?
If the threat is an evil admin who can change the code it doesn’t matter. The admin could change the server code to store unencrypted passwords, they could change the client code to send unencrypted passwords, they could make clients post plaintext passwords whenever you login. Hashing is damage control incase someone absconds with the password database.
What you are saying is somewhat misleading 😒
But did you know over 50k people can see your Facebook password 🤔
But seriously, everything you send to a website/server can, of course, also be seen by it.
This has always been the case everywhere. I am a little surprised that this is suddenly something new…
If you call someone out for lying at least address the issue.
Looking through the rest of the comments, I think there were already enough explanations.
Making the accusation towards Lemmy that admins can see passwords in clear text is misleading.
It suggests that this is different from other platforms, which it is not. All admins can get your password from/for their respective websites. Either by logging the traffic before the password gets hashed or by modifying the application so that the password gets transferred in plaintext. This applies to Lemmy, Facebook, Google and literally any other service where you enter a password.
It doesnt. you interpret it that way. Thats fine, its your opinion. But please be a little more careful with those accusations.