I want to set up a lemmy instance as a subreddit alternative for a community I moderate. I would be running the instance on a local machine in my home so I really want to make sure that it can’t be traced to my physical location.

I already subscribe to ExpressVPN for general use, can I just install it on the local machine, press connect, and boom be anonymous? What impact would this have on users?

  • bunk@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    If I’m not mistaken to make your instance available to other people you’d have to set up a reverse proxy. And a correctly set up reverse proxy shouldn’t reveal your IP, only the local IP (127.0.0.1).

    This is incorrect. The reverse proxy only handles the internal routing, so if you’re not tunneling, or otherwise obfuscating your IP, selfhosting websites exposes your IP address.