Before migrating to Lemmy, I decided to request a copy of the data Reddit has on me.
To my surprise, the export includes a file ip_logs.csv
with a list of all IP addresses that I used to connect to Reddit for the last 3-4 months!!
That seems quite unnecessary.
Excuse me for asking but… So? Why should I care about this?
Because collecting data that is not strictly necessary is almost always a bad move. IP addresses might be relatively harmless, but might link you to other activities.
You personally might be okay with reddit knowing your IP addresses, but some people might get into trouble.
Take the insane anti-abortion laws in some US states. If an IP address from those states accesses pro-choice subreddits, that might be enough for law enforcement to start harassing someone.