I find the idea of self-hosting to be really appealing, but at the same time I find it to be incredibly scary. This is not because I lack the technical expertise, but because I have gotten the impression that everyone on the Internet would immediately try to hack into it to make it join their bot net. As a result, I would have to be constantly vigilant against this, yet one of the numerous assailants would only have to succeed once. Dealing with this constant threat seems like it would be frightening enough as a full-time job, but this would only be a hobby project for me.
How do the self-hosters on Lemmy avoid becoming one with the botnet?
That’s the point. It taught me things that I wouldn’t learn if it weren’t for that scared feeling. I agree that some sensitive things are better off my server.
You should start small and keep only things you want to be public, and services under basic logins. First logins, maybe admin admin but slowly you will get better and also place fail2ban and crowdsec. Once you have enough confidence and years of service on your belt. You can trust it with sensitive files under heavy guard.