I want to poison as much of my online data as I can, and I know that companies can get it anyway if I delete it, but if I were to spam sheer volume, it would cost more than it’s worth to try and sort it.

Dad uses windows and the main device I use is his laptop, and I understand that Microsoft scrapes everything they can. He’s going to reset his laptop soon, so all the junk is erased, but would it be possible to temporarily poison most data on there (from ms perspective) until it’s reset?

Would it be possible to do that on other things too, say corporate owned software, social media, etc?

  • Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    For M$ no clue, for browsing,
    AdNauseam comes to mind.

    It’s a fork of uBlock Origin,
    which instead of blocking all the ads,
    hides all the ads + clicks on them all in the background, which:

    • Costs advertisers a lot of money
    • Poisens your data profile, since they can’t make up your actual interests anymore

    It’s more protest-ware then privacy-ware though,
    since you’ll be overflooding them with bs data,
    instead of minimizing the data collected.

  • unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    The data has already been scrapped, processed, categorized and indexed. This is quite literally true.

    Do not worry about it, and simply try to not give them much from now on.

    Also filling the internet with junk is how our best ever collective project dies. Don’t be a part of that.

    • Camille_Jamal@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 day ago

      I don’t mean flood on user side, I meant spamming data scraped by corporate. If it’s too expensive for corporate to clean up vs how much it’s sold for, they won’t bother at some point. It’s already been stolen… That’s only true for the data that already exists.

      Kinda like if you had a bunch of bots tied to the same IP as you, and you tell them to generate random searches, click random sites, etc, but never post/comment/vote on anything. They’re all tied to the same address, and at some point, it will be to costly to continue stealing data, cleaning it up, and selling it than it will be worth.

      They’d either try and clean it up (costs too much, may potentially give up) or stop stealing your data (consumer wins)

      I won’t spam online, but I don’t want corporate having scary accurate info/data about me. I’d only want spam going to corporate, not to people.

      Do not worry about it, and simply try to not give them much from now on.

      Fair, buuuuuuut…

      If you hide as much info as you can, whatever info they can get (likely through illegal means) is going to be accurate. They may have less info, but it is all stuff you definitely did (unless you do both methods at once)

      What I’m going for is more I prefer to occasionally waste some corporate time, but the user experience isn’t worsened rather than I will do whatever it takes to ruin megacorps

      Either way, have a great day

  • sgtlion [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Meaningfully poisoning your data is like… 10 books worth of stuff to know. I like the idea, but focusing on not sending it is usually the easiest route

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    How about fake real data instead? Like maybe there should be a tool that p2p shares real HTML cookies between peers, scrambles them and then serves them sanitized to the browser?

    Cuz fuck them, two can play this game.

  • tinfoilhat@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    You’ll never be able to poison existing data, only prevent them from gaining new data. Use email aliases, vpn, blocker tracking, and don’t use the same username in 2 places.

  • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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    1 day ago

    I would just block all the data collection dns names you can find. Easiest way is to setup a pihole and point your router’s dns at it

    • Camille_Jamal@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 day ago

      Don’t know how to do that, also sadly using windows.

      I kinda know how to install pihole onto a computer, as in I ran the command on mint once, but I did it slightly wrong potentially

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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        1 day ago

        The OS you are using doesnt matter. I didnt follow a guide or else I’d link one for you but even with little knowledge it could very well be done. All you are doing after installing is changing 1 IP on your router’s DNS settings and setting a reservation for the pihole machine. Its practically setup at install. All I changed was blocking some extra microsoft stuff like their heartbeat monitor and setting my own DNS to Quad9. Might be worth it to look into if you are curious enough about privacy to poison your data.

      • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Use adguard or nextdns for os wide protection and ublock for browser level protection. No selfhosting required.

        Checkout betterfox for more info. If you want you can also install the user.js file for better cookie protection as well.