🔒 Security & Privacy Guide

Important: If you're contributing to this project and want to maintain anonymity, follow these steps to prevent leaking personal information.

Anonymize Your Git Identity
Prevent Path Leaks

Anonymize Your Git Identity

Configure Git to use a pseudonymous identity for this repository:

# Navigate to the repository
cd KfChatDotNet

# Set local Git identity (only affects this repo)
git config user.name "YourPseudonym"
git config user.email "pseudonym@example.com"

# Or use GitHub's noreply email
git config user.email "username@users.noreply.github.com"

# Verify your settings
git config user.name
git config user.email

Note: Use git config (without --global) to set identity per-repository only. This won't affect your other projects.

Check Your Current Identity

Before making commits, verify what identity will be used:

# Check current configuration
git config --list --show-origin | grep user

# See what will be used for the next commit
git config user.name
git config user.email

Prevent Path Leaks

Your system username and file paths can leak into commits through:

1. Exception Stack Traces

Be careful when committing error logs or debugging output that might contain paths like:

❌ /home/john.smith/repos/KfChatDotNet/
❌ C:\Users\JohnSmith\Documents\KfChatDotNet\
❌ /Users/john.smith/Projects/KfChatDotNet/

What to do:

Strip paths from error logs before committing
Use relative paths in documentation
Sanitize stack traces to remove usernames

2. Absolute Paths in Code

Avoid hardcoding absolute paths. Use relative paths or configuration:

// ❌ Bad - leaks username
var logPath = "/home/john.smith/.bot/logs/";
var dataPath = "C:\\Users\\JohnSmith\\AppData\\bot\\";

// ✅ Good - use relative or configurable paths
var logPath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, "logs");
var dataPath = Path.Combine(AppContext.BaseDirectory, "data");
var configPath = await SettingsProvider.GetValueAsync("Bot.LogPath");

3. IDE Configuration Files

The .gitignore already excludes common IDE files, but verify:

# Check what's being tracked
git ls-files | grep -E '\.(user|suo|vscode|idea)'

# If you find personal IDE files, remove them
git rm --cached path/to/personal/file
git commit -m "Remove personal IDE files"

4. Database Files

The database (db.sqlite) can contain:

Your KiwiFarms password (in Settings table)
Your KiwiFarms cookies
Potentially identifiable usage patterns

Never commit db.sqlite - it's already in .gitignore.

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