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Maintaining a level of anonymity. (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 weeks ago by werefreeatlast@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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I figure this would be a good place to ask. Im not paranoid but I say a ton of stupid stuff on the Internet. It's fun having conversations with total strangers after work 😁. Anyway, I was thinking. Could I keep a level of anonymity if I just created new accounts every month for example? Is that a thing people use? Like every month you just abandon your bs account and get a completely new account on google. Google specifically since they are the assholes that keep selling our data.

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[-] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 27 points 4 weeks ago

Depends who you're trying to avoid.

Some downvote brigade on Lemmy? sure.

One of the major databrokers? Probably not.

Google and Meta and such don't even need you to have an account to build accurate profiles and track you everywhere, so making a new Google account will almost certainly not buy you any real privacy: Google will just add your new account to your profile and keep right on selling your shit.

[-] LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org 5 points 3 weeks ago

Google and Meta and such don’t even need you to have an account to build accurate profiles and track you everywhere

This is true if one does nothing. It takes a lot of work but it is indeed possible to starve them of your data.

[-] ladfrombrad@lemdro.id 2 points 4 weeks ago

Google will just add your new account to your profile and keep right on selling your shit.

This is exactly why I used a pseudonym from the outset.

[-] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

From what I understand it doesn’t matter, that’s just a label they assign to all the data they have about you. Attaching all of that to your real name is trivial once they have the profile.

[-] ladfrombrad@lemdro.id 1 points 3 weeks ago

Exactly, that's why anything I do with my real name is on my wholly separate profile / device / email.

It's a boring computer that has my real name on it.

[-] gdog05@lemmy.world 17 points 4 weeks ago

On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. Except for Meta, Alphabet, Russia, China, Israel, the NSA and your ISP. But no one else knows

[-] Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 3 weeks ago

or care.

[-] toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Tor if you dont want your fediverse server + ISP to know who you are on the fediverse. Other than that, fediverse people are not likely to use google trackers, so you should be safe without having to make new accounts constantly. Noscript for all other websites, gets rid of trackers very effectively, but a bit annoying because you have to whitelist the javascript you need.

[-] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago

You need to start reducing your fingerprint on internet.

The only reliable way to do so is selfhosting your stuff.

There are a few communities here in lemmy, so check on them

[-] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago

I selfhosted my photos! That makes me so very happy honestly.

[-] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Then follow that path, once you are comfortable with the approach you can start hosting more and more services,to the point that you can selfhost your own messenger services or ms teams services.

Once you are in that situation, you can think in accounts rotation and/or burner identities to address the services you can not pull from the big techs

[-] 0x0@programming.dev 1 points 3 weeks ago

The only reliable way to do so is selfhosting your stuff.

Aren't you reducing your fingerprint to that specific IP address?

[-] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

Even if you have a valid point, modern fingerprinting technics usually is done through your data and the connection dependencies of them (which accounts are activated from the sane computer and so on).

Selfhosting remove some links between your data set like the files you store in drive, the people who appear in your photos, your contact list, to whom you email... Etc etc

Suddenly all this data is vanishing from the big techs, so, in theory it would be possible to make that association process more difficult

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago

I haven't had a Google account for over a year and a half now and I stopped primarily using the one I did have in 2019 and would only log into it like once a year.

[-] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

I tried self hosting my own email. I was successful but a little weary of how unreliable my own set up was. But also I got to see just how stupid stupid the email system is. Like it was genius stuff when it first came out but knowing what we know now there's this digital aura of just stupid. Examples:

  1. Only big companies can host email. Due to all the attacks. That's fucking stupid.

  2. literally anyone can intercept your email and read it if it's not encrypted. Nobody encrypts email.

  3. your email receiving system must be on or you will miss the email.

And it just keeps getting stupider and stupider from there. And here, I'm using the word stupid in a similar context as one laughs when someone talks about using asbestos for a whole new application. If a dog could laugh at that, he would.

Anyway, so here we are, a big ass company has 15Gb worth of emails from most everyone and we can't easily stop using the system because everyone else is using it. I got me a proton account too. But it really not the direction I want to take anymore I think.

Ideally I would keep using email for work until it folds over but then personally I would find a different, safer, more modern way to communicate with others. Much like here but with the same ability of sending larger files like zip, photos etc.

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago

Oh, I hear you on that one. I use Proton for my email, but I use my own domain, so I had to set up all these security things like DKIM, etc. So that my messages would not be marked as spam in big mail providers. Adding the proper records to the DNS was a bit of a pain, but other than that it went pretty well.

[-] Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Gerald, is that you?

[-] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

I'm Pepe!

this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
28 points (86.8% liked)

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