Comment by njharman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by njharman | Hacker News Reader

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Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real address of sex offender and now your name shows up next to it on OMFGAMCGTBR.com. Or uses alias of some known criminal and a prosecutor subpoenas "False info Service" to find the real name/address of this criminal, you.

The only ways to not be embarrassed by what is online about you are. [And I understand embarrassment is not the only reason to be anonymous, but if people are honest with themselves it is 90% of the reason they care.]

1. don't give a shit / don't be embarrassed / don't live by other's standards or norms (this seems easiest to me but I'm sort of anti-social amoral and have not been giving a shit what others values as they apply to me from a young age, YMMV)

2. Don't do embarrassing things. Sort of corollary of #1 (as in the less you are embarrassed by the easier it is to not to embarrassing things.

3. Don't live in modern society. Get born some place with no electricity and kill (optionally eat) all the scientist who come to study/photograph you.

To further go with this, I have a simple email I scored when gmail first opened. Basically it's a single name with no extra characters. Anyways tons of people sign up for things under that email, and that email is of course in the Ashley Madison leak. It's also part of a ton of other leaks but it's never me. Someone even has a facebook account under it that they won't let me delete. People have used it for AT&T, Verizon, AllState, Honda. Hell even FarmersOnly.com.

I had to stop using that email because of all this over the years. It's unfortunate but this email address is tied to me, I've tried to erase my name from it as much as I can on the Internet tying it to me over the years.

Mostly I just laugh it off, it's annoying. At least my wife knows I wouldn't be on farmersonly.com.

I thought facebook sent a confirmation email to the address. How are people getting around that requirement?

Yeah, I have a firstinitialverycommonlastname@gmail.com address which is full of misdirected email. I don't use it either, though it is my default throwaway email for access walls (enter your email to read this article!) and the like. Someone opened a facebook account with it, an instagram account with it, etc.

I get cell phone bills which you can't unsubscribe from, since the auth is actually tied to the phone. I get tons of email newsletters. For a good chunk of them the unsubscribe flow doesn't actually work, so I wind up marking them as spam.

Apparently people signing up to gmail with bogus secondary recovery account emails that Google has a whole flow for "disavow this email from your account". I wind up using that flow 2-3 times a week.

The concept of email is hard I guess.

I have an gmail account with an initial and a very uncommon surname, and even I get regular updates on a lady's food deliveries.

If ever a potentially relationship-breaking revelation was plausibly deniable, it's this one.

You're assuming the false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content, including the bad stuff.

I would think it would be trivial to collect relatively innocent concepts and flood the net with them. Such that the nym "VLM" would now and forever be associated solely with thousands, perhaps millions, of facebook posts of cute kitten memes. That would be easy to filter, but its not like world wide civilization has any shortage of blandly familiar inoffensive fluff to use as a source.

Meanwhile build a worldwide black list, so no religious commentary at all, no alcohol / tobacco / other drug use, no political commentary.

It seems like a reasonable startup opportunity.

Meanwhile working the other side, another startup can work on filtering bland stuff from social media. Maybe with a secret back channel to the flooders. I would imagine, unfortunately, if you crossed off all the inane posts from most social media users, the end result would be many totally legit people having no record at all!

"Innocent concepts" are in the eye of the beholder.

And don't forget the True you will still be online. A service that only works if you yourself are limited to no religious commentary at all, no alcohol / tobacco / other drug use, no political commentary. Is really no service at all.

> false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content,

It probably does or will be easily detected and machine filterable. There's already algo's that make good guess if some texts were written by same person.

Facing divorce because your name appeared on a list is more than just embarrassing.

Maybe don't marry someone who will divorce you simply because your name is on a list?

Maybe you thought you did that

Touché...

To expand on Retra comment. Either;

You are facing divorce cause you cheated on your spouse.

Despite not cheating, your name is on list. Your spouse is still divorcing you because there were other issues and it was coming name on list or not. Or, they're psyco (can't understand name on list is not cheating) and good riddance.

You have healthy marriage.

That's fine. I'm not arguing against any of that. Whatever the reasons, if your facing a divorce as a consequence of being associated with a naming-and-shaming campaign, this is more than merely embarrassing.

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