Reddit account for 13+ years. Constantly prompted to provide email. Have no desire to have any personal information in it whatsoever, so never provided any. However, it is the only account I’ve ever used for extensive long term discussion and community involvement. Thousands of comments in discussions with other folks on topics I’m interested in. Logged in from many different locations and platforms over the years. Opted to never enter an email. Have never forgotten password, never needed to reset password. Didn’t care about recovery. If the account is lost, so be it. Logged in recently to a banner saying my account has been “suspended for suspicious activity security reasons” and the above message. The only way to recover the account is to “reset the password by entering an email”. Created a random anonymous email online, entered it as a fresh new email never provided before, reset link shows up in email, reset password, back in the account.

If I had to make a cynical skeptical guess - looks like an obvious stunt in advance of the IPO to grab a bunch of emails for accounts that didn’t have emails in order to drive up account metrics used for valuation. Side note, I did receive the IPO invitation.

I spend more time on Lemmy now because the phone apps are awesome. I only hang on to Reddit because there are some communities that exist there that don’t have Lemmy equivalents. But I have been thinking about running one of those account comment / post scramblers and then deleting. This is bringing me closer to that decision.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    8 months ago

    OP highlights some damage caused by data harvesting, that is not widely spoken: users reacting against providing data to sites or software, even when doing so might potentially increase the security of their data.

    Including myself. Frankly? If I got the same message as the OP, my knee-jerk reaction would be: “oh great they’re trying to associate my Reddit account with my e-mail, and my e-mail with everything else, for the sake of data profiling. The claim that it’s for my security is probably bull fucking shit.”

    The worst part? As a wise man once said, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t after you”. …okay, I’m joking about Kurt Cobain being a wise man, but not about the rest - the risk that the “it’s for your protection, your user, chrust us” discourse is bullshit and that they want to sell your data is very real.