How can I prevent my device from downloading unknown blobs?

[christianbundy]

I'd like to avoid downloading any blobs unless a friend has posted about it to their append-only log. I'm concerned that right now I'm downloading data from unknown network peers with no accountability.

The documentation says that I can set sympathy to 0 to prevent my device from requesting blobs I don't want, but does this also stop other devices from pushing blobs onto my device?

[dominictarr]

yes. blobs.push and blobs.add are only exposed to a client with full access (I.e. the same private key) remote peers can only tell you they have a blob, and then you ask for it. in ssb everything is pull, for reasons like this.

[christianbundy]

Cool, thanks. Am I correct in my understanding that sympathy > 0 lets network peers basically push to your device? I think someone [within 3 network hops] has been wanting a handful of blobs and then later is uploading them to the network, which adds them to all of the devices within sympathy range.

[dominictarr]

sympathy is how many hops out (in terms of peer connections) you'll automatically pull from, yes that's in practice the same as a push.

[stale[bot]]

Is this still relevant? If so, what is blocking it? Is there anything you can do to help move it forward?