Inspired by a question I saw a while back, is it possible to make my data/online presence useless/undesirable to companies to purchase?

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Chunk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It depends on who you’re hiding from. If you want to keep the GRU off your back then burner phones sound great. If I don’t want Google to know too much about me then burner phones, generic credit cards, and tor are probably overkill.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah was just trying to make the personal data worth as little as possible.

        Any site you use a card on will link you in Nexus. That stuff is gold.

        Even the best privacy browsers leave a fingerprint. You can run the acid test and see how unique you are. Even Firefox private browsing isn’t enough to disassociate your traffic from non private.

        The problem with VPN is it’s somewhat static. Tor spreads your crap out.

        But as you say, it’s who you’re trying to hide from. If you don’t want anyone to profit of you, you hide from them all as much as you can.

        • Chunk@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You made me think that there should be a private tor-inspired VPN. Users pay money to the VPN company and that VPN company pays 3rd parties to build out their network.