Inspired by a question I saw a while back, is it possible to make my data/online presence useless/undesirable to companies to purchase?
Sure. Wiggle your mouse, introduce randomness into your typing, and read about things you’re not interested in. It doesn’t matter though as they’ll still sell your info.
Garbage in, garbage out.
No. People are always going to pay for your data even if you make it incorrect.
AdNauseum plugin combined with VPN and private browser mode.
It’s an ad blocker that clicks everything.
I’ve kind of always wanted to use AdNauseum, but since I still depend on my Google account somewhat I’m hesitant to give them reasons to delete me, and I’ve settled for blocking ads and supporting rival services.
Has anyone had their google account banned over this?
Is this chaotic neutral or chaotic evil?
I contend that it’s chaotic good.
Private browser mode in many browsers disables plugins by default, and also doesn’t do anything to stop trackers or data collection. All private mode does is keep your activity private from others who also have access to your device (e.g. family members, roommates), by not saving browser history/cookies/etc.
Also, VPN’s can be helpful, but there are ways to “fingerprint” individual users behind VPN’s by how they move their mouse and click speed and what websites they visit etc… I imagine plugins like AdNauseum could help with that. It’s a clever idea, I’ll have to check it out - thanks!
Firefox can allow plugins in private mode. I only mentioned private mode because it ensures you’re not logged in anywhere.
It’s impossible to make your data completely unattractive to purchase but using something like the adnauseum extension on your browser can make your data less useful when it has been purchased.
Companies don’t purchase specific user data they purchase datasets.
Like reddit will says “we have x amount of user and here is what data we collect on them” you can access this data for $Y"
So and then those companies use that data to show you personalised ads or whatever and do a fuck ton, like and obscene amount of data analysis on it and your habits to see if it was worth the cost and will renovate with reddit the price to access their data.
So one individual user going weird won’t do anything. But if you made a ton of bots and made them act weird you might be able to make the dataset worth less. But honestly probably not that much as they have tools to filter bots and stuff.
This is just my opinion, but I don’t think so. I love the thought and wish there was, though. I think no matter what you do, it’s still information about a potential user/customer and still tells someone looking at it about you. “Oh, we have information on about 4% of the population that wants to actively subvert our data analytics.”. Obviously that’s made up, I didn’t bother trying to even guess what a potentially realistic number might be.
Again in my opinion, the only way to provide no value to data analytics is to not be a data point, and good luck with that. Best I’ve been trying to do is disable targeted ads anywhere I can, reset my identifier ids regularly on things like android tv where I can, and try to blast cookies anywhere possible. I don’t know if it even makes a difference or just makes me feel better
Don’t worry it probably already is.
Meta and Google disagree.
I use generated email/usernames everywhere I’m forced to login, in the hope they can’t connect all the dots. Don’t know if it works though.
I work in marketing, had an issue the other day someone did something weird by browsing our site with a personal email address and worked out the naming conventions we use to jump the sign up form for an in-person event and went straight to the thank-you page to get the details.
So then we had his personal email (which we didn’t want!) and had to connect it to his work email in the CRM to connect his profile.
So, for the general use cases it would work, but someone that is trying to connect the dots probably could.
Unlink it from yourself. It’s harder than you’d think. Use a privacy respecting browser with privacy badger installed and tor or VPN. Use generic credit cards. Use burner emails and phone numbers.
If none of your stuff is linked together and none of it is linked to you, it’s not worth much, someone will buy it, but it’ll be one of a billion useless records in a huge low quality dump.
There are browser extensions that fill up your data/presence with meaningless junk
Like what?
I was hoping someone else would comment since I don’t use it myself
I think it’s this
deleted by creator
Ransomware has never looked attractive until now.
