cyberlyra

Yes, I regularly use unusual spellings, different postal addresses, pseudonyms, CC's, the whole nine yards.

OP here: This is what the article in Public Books is all about. A lot of the "benefits" the Park presents are made up, manufactured conveniences, accompanied by manufactured inconveniences that make it hard for others to resist. The Park makes people feel like they've get a lot of benefit out of playing along, while the park actually benefits from convincing people so easily to relinquish any control over their personal information. We should think more about whether a convenience or "benefit" on offer--a few dollars off, a few minutes shaved--is a lure designed to get us to sign our data away for their profit.

What did I get out of it? Personal data autonomy.

It's not a dealbreaker for practical reasons, it's for moral ones. I don't think they should even ask for or collect that data, given the ability to de-anonymize that the additional information provides them. They don't need it and shouldn't ask. Especially as most people don't know they can just make stuff up, and never do.

I'm with you, I make up email addresses, mail addresses, credit card numbers, pseudonyms, genders, birthdates etc...

OP here: For context, the cash is to stop corporate databases from knowing I have children. It's not for obfuscating everything. https://www.optoutproject.net/how-to-keep-your-pregnancy-pri...

OP here. My kids know "Mommy doesn't like Google." If we were totally restrictive and opaque about it, it might feel like living in a cult. But I use data privacy techniques to teach our kids about how systems work, where data flows, how computers process information, and how to implement home-grown alternatives. Otherwise they'll think an Alexa "just works" when they talk to it, or that they're a "digital native" just because they can swipe on a gesture-based interface. They will grow up and make their own choices: my hope is to prepare them with a better understanding of how systems work under the hood, a richer grasp of the history of surveillance in society--and a relatively clean slate data trail.

It's mom who's obsessed. Dad just enjoyed the experience ;)

Thanks! You totally grokked what I'm doing with this--I appreciate it!

Yes I do think a lot about the effectiveness of personal responsibility, and its limits. Certainly I could request my logs and data from every company, although that takes more time than opting out. In the meanwhile, I don't block ads as those as my only clues as to what a corporate database thinks it knows about me (obviously I use blockers to stop info flow from me to them, it's just that I want to see what they think they know). I also use lots of addresses and CC numbers so I can trace data migration and can identify the culprit if so ( https://www.optoutproject.net/what-email-address-should-i-us...)

As for if it's working... There are more quantitative ways to tell for sure. In the meanwhile, my Pregnancy Experiment started in 2013 and in the intervening ten years I have seen zero online ads for anything baby- or child-related, and I have only received an unsolicited catalog in the mail every three years (thanks to the above technique, though, I always knew who the weak link was). When I tell other moms that, their jaws drop.

Not annoyed. Spouse is fully on board. Kids think it's fun, especially as we use data privacy to explain how systems work under the hood. Extended family is supportive. Maybe people are surprised to hear that, but that's been my experience so far.

Original author here: My phone runs Sailfish, a mobile Linux OS (Red Hat).

I agree that, for the premium price, we should get some data privacy in return!

As long as it's not that senator who asked Zuckerberg to "shut down finsta"... ;)

Original author here. I'm also in favor of more writing about privacy motivation, even if editors don't always want that all in the text they publish. I'm writing more about it at The Opt Out Project in addition to other places: for instance, the famous Pregnancy Experiment, where I kept my data about my (unborn) children away from digital detection: https://time.com/83200/privacy-internet-big-data-opt-out/

(Original author here). Yes I am aware of the identifiers that are sold through a third party data provider. Reading further, I also note that I decided not to care if Disneyland knows that I went, it was more about continuing to obfuscate my family, so I decided that was a risk I would accept. Of course, YMMV.

(Original author here.) Yes, living this way is sometimes exhausting. I don't expect others to do what I do. I often go to extremes to reveal how complicated opting out actually is, in an effort to point the way to an alternative path that doesn't require all this surveillance. There's more about that here: https://www.optoutproject.net/about-the-opt-out-project/

I'm the author of the original post. I'm happy to answer questions in thread.