Theoretically speaking of course ;)
If my home instance gets hacked, what’s the worst case scenario for my personal data?
Data collected by a standard Lemmy server:
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IP address of the device you’re using to access Lemmy
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Posts, comments, favourites, upvotes, downvotes, subscriptions, blocked users, blocked communities. This also includes PMs (don’t use Lemmy PMs, make use the fact that your Lemmy can include a link to a Matrix account!)
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Username, hashed password, email address if provided
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TOTP public key if you have 2FA enabled
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Your application if your server requires/required you to apply to register
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Avatar, profile description, account registration date
Installed apps may track more information (i.e. paid apps will probably collect some information so you can actually use the pro features, maybe device IDs, possibly advertising information if you can find a Lemmy app with ads)
Individual Lemmy apps may or may not collect more information; the code is open so servers can modify the source code if they so wish.
What is a matrix account?
Matrix is a decentralized chat service. It’s to Signal/Discord what Lemmy is to Reddit. It doesn’t interoperate with the Fediverse directly, but Lemmy does have a special field in the profile page to write down your Matrix account. What Matrix does have, is a chat system that’s actually designed for chat, which the Fediverse lacks by itself.
Like on the Fediverse, you pick a server to sign up with (matrix.org, matrix.infosec.exchange, there’s a whole bunch of them) and then you use it to talk to other people. Here’s a guide to joining Matrix if you’ve never heard of it.
If you don’t want to use someone else’s server, you can set up your own server if you’re technically oriented, like you can set up your own Mastodon or Lemmy instance. You can use it to put all manner of chat apps in one place (iMessage + SMS + Signal + WhatsApp + Telegram + Line + Slack + Discord) through bridges if you set it up yourself, or you can pay for a service to do it for you. Using bridges isn’t quite as easy and intuitive as using the native apps themselves, but Matrix to Matrix chats work excellent.
Matrix has individual chats, group chats, “spaces” (like Discord servers, but with the ability to group together “servers” and individual chatrooms in spaces of your own name and hierarchy if you wish). There are various apps to choose from (“Element” is probably the one you want), and all of it is end-to-end encrypted.
Alternatively, XMPP is an older protocol that offers many of the same benefits, but I don’t think it’s as popular these days. Various big open source projects switched to Matrix from IRC chat, which probably helped a lot with popularity.
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