πŸ‘ Poison πŸ‘ your πŸ‘ data ☠️

The goal is to make corporate data less profitable.

Even stuff as simple as setting your birthdate to 1970-01-01 everywhere, adding [TEST] or [DELETED] as your name or account notes anywhere you don't need them to know your name.

Using plugins like AdNauseam to poison ad trackers (and cost them marketing dollars).

Using VPNs set to different locations.

Signing into data broker sites to "correct" outdated info (they'll often let you do that with little-to-no proof of identity, but will require your passport or state ID in order to delete your info). Bonus points if you correct it to someone else's info on their site that's similar to yours.

Only fill in required fields when you sign up for anything, but only provide correct info if it matters for you to use the service, otherwise provide plausible, but incorrect, data.

If you use LLMs anywhere, use the free tier and always vote thumbs up for bad answers and down for good ones. It wastes their resources and drives up their costs while making their training data worse.

@alice scribbling notes furiously

For the less savvy among us, tysvm for this helpful advice πŸ™

@Irenetherogue sure! There are low tech ways to do itβ€”just lie...to every corporation, app, and marketer you can. Make it plausible, but wrong.

Bonus: include something wildly implausible once in a while. It makes folx more likely to overlook the subtle ones.

@alice @Irenetherogue I got off when taken to court for nonpayment of Poll Tax (Thatcher thing, yes, I'm that old) because I poisoned their data by missing out a crucial box on the form.

Don't refuse to comply but *always* sabotage their data. It's simply costs them more.

@boggin @alice @Irenetherogue
Back in the nineties I'd pay my phone bill by cheque. BT would charge me an admin fee, that eventually topped Β£7.50 just to cash a cheque. Of course they wanted to bully me in to paying via Direct Debit.
So I made all my cheques out to 'Bastard Telecom' and didn't sign them. I thought I was being very clever, forcing them to hustle for their fee.
But they just went and cashed them anyway! No idea how as they were unsigned... πŸ€”
@MostlyTato @boggin @alice @Irenetherogue
The US Interval Revenue Service is renowned for cashing checks *made out to someone else*.