How could anyone find out which sites are you following using an RSS feed? And I mean in a broad way: can the site track you? Can ISP? Network managers?

Let’s say you want to follow a bunch of political sites that you don’t want to be easily attached to, is RSS a good way to do it? Are there extra precautions to take?

My first thought would be that it’s the same as using any other browser, so not a great way to be private. Am I wrong?

  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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    2 days ago

    Depends on your threat model. If you use secure DNS and https for the RSS feed, then these people would know your IP and the IP you’re connecting to:

    • the DNS provider
    • the RSS server
    • your ISP/ VPN server

    Your ISP or VPN will know you’ve made a TCP connection to that server at a specified port, but that’s it. It’s trivial for them to reverse lookup the IP back into a name.

    Only the RSS server will know the specific URL you’re visiting though.