Hey, howdy, hallo,
For a long time, we’ve all been conditioned to provide accurate information on the internet. Signing up for a new service? First name, last name, address, date of birth, email, it’s become standard. What most people don’t realize is that 99.9% of the time, this information isn’t actually needed to use the service. But companies want it anyway. They collect it, analyze it, and now use it to train AI models. They sometimes even sell it, because the 200-page ToS you didn’t read gave them permission to do so.
And let’s not forget about data breaches. Once that company has a breach, that means all that information you gave them when you signed up is now public.
While this idea isn’t revolutionary, I’ve found that some people just need to hear it out loud, or feel like they have permission to do it:
You do not need to provide accurate information when signing up for most things!
Disclaimer: I’m speaking from the perspective of an individual living in the U.S. Laws may vary depending on where you live.
Companies have collected massive amounts of data on everyone. If you’ve been signing up with your real name, email, and other personal info, they likely have a pretty accurate profile of you. It’s easy to link those breadcrumbs across sites, especially if you’re using the same email or username.
By breaking these patterns, you start poisoning the dataset and obscuring your trail. You can’t erase the past, but you can make everything you do from this point on harder to track.
These types of services never get my real info. If nothing’s being shipped, why would they need my real name or address?
I use Fake Name Generator for signups. If it’s a paid service, I still don’t give them real billing details. While you could use a Visa pre-paid card bought with cash, that’s not always convenient. I use Privacy.com, which lets you generate unique virtual cards with limits or single-use settings.
With Privacy.com cards, you can enter whatever billing name and address you want. I just use fresh info from Fake Name Generator.
Sure, Privacy.com is tied to my real identity (it’s a financial institution), but now only one vendor has that info instead of every random site I use a card on. Plus, on your bank statement, charges just show up as "Privacy.com," meaning your bank can’t see where your money’s going, or sell that data.
I also use SimpleLogin for unique emails per account. I wrote about that in this newsletter, so I won’t repeat myself here.
This one’s trickier. You do need to give a shipping address, so some info has to be real. I follow the same steps above, except for shipping.
For the name, I’ll use just my first name and last initial, or sometimes my middle name instead. If your mailbox doesn’t care about names, you could even go fully fake here. But be careful: if you ever need to verify your identity for a lost package or refund, using a fake name might make that more difficult or even impossible.
You could also rent a P.O. Box or PMB (Private Mailbox) to help preserve your physical address privacy from online stores (highly recommended). This could be its own newsletter topic, so I might dive into that in the future.
You might be thinking, “Well, if you’re getting something shipped, they already have your address.” And that’s true, to an extent. But shipping details and payment information are usually stored separately.
For payment, your billing info typically stays with the payment processor (like Stripe). That means Stripe ends up with a completely random identity for you and can’t easily link your purchases across different vendors that use their platform. The shipping address stays with the vendor you’re purchasing from and Stripe will typically not see this.
But it really isn’t. Instead of giving accurate info, just don’t. You don’t need to jump straight into using something like Privacy.com. Start simple. Stop handing over your real name or info to sites that don’t need it. Every bit helps. Poison the well so their data becomes less accurate, and the next time there’s a breach, you won’t have to worry as much about being exposed.
This doesn’t apply to financial institutions or anything government-related. Doing this there could count as fraud.
Give it a try. Worst case, you go back to doing what you used to do.
I hope you had a great July, and I’ll see you in August!
-Josh
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