I’m getting a bit sick of large corporations a) demanding excess data as a condition of doing business with me, b) allowing it to be stolen, and c) giving zero fucks about it.
What are some things that us netizens can do to make our displeasure known.
Extra points for funny ideas.
Use EICAR test strings as your password.
If they store your password in plain text the AV will lock the user database.
If your password gets leaked and they are using bad password security, when your password is cracked the AV will isolate the file.
Bold of you to assume a corporation storing passwords in plain text would be using AV
According to EICAR’s specification the antivirus detects the test file only if it starts with the 68-byte test string and is not more than 128 bytes long. As a result, antiviruses are not expected to raise an alarm on some other document containing the test string.
This won’t work, assuming the database file is more than 128 bytes long
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Ah… “advice” consisting of “I’ve heard of a thing”
Whoa, I wanna try this now! Thx!
ELI5 please? I’ve read the other replies, but would love to understand a bit more.
EICAR test strings are strings of text that can be used to test an antivirus. Basically, you bury the file somewhere, and see if your AV picks it up. The joke being that if they’re storing your password in plaintext (a big no-no from a security standpoint) then their AV will clamp down on the database once you create your account and the test string is embedded.
It wouldn’t work in this instance, unfortunately; EICAR test strings are only meant to work when embedded in files that are shorter than 128 bytes. And every database is almost certainly larger than that.
More in the spirit of this, prefer and actively seek out alternatives that collect as little or even no data at all and test to make sure they run without internet access. If they give you a hard time or straight up dont work without an internet connection when they ought to be able to, chuck em
Edit: also call them out in reviews. Why you collect data guys, dont you want my money?
This has been the go-to for decades and it’s not working. I feel like we need to be prepared to engage with the system, but make it clear we are not just passive consumers. Something that becomes viral maybe?..
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Not exactly what you’re looking for, but Ad-Nauseum is a nice way to inject a ton of garbage into the data corps collect.
I played around with this some time ago, until I thought more about it: using tools like this makes adtech money.
Adtech doesn’t care if you’re interested in X or Y, just that they can charge the advertiser for it. By injecting fake traffic, they’re getting more data to sell.
If you send back one of those reply mail envelopes it costs them money. Stuff those envelopes with junk and send them back.
I don’t get many of them anymore, but when I do, I mail them back with a little slip of paper inside that says “poop”.
Make your data useless or wrong.
More passively, there’s probably an oddly large amount of John Does born on January 1, 2000 ;)
More offensively, anti-image-gen data poisoning such as Nightshade exists. It’s well-defended against IIRC so hopefully someone can Cunningham’s Law correct me. And this is also more solo of a movement (as opposed to gaining mass support for something)
Every “big data” data source I have ever worked with is already filled to the brim with low-quality, obviously wrong data. I have to think that is also true of the data scraped or collected by the big companies. I don’t think it matters that the personal data they collect is wrong, so long as they can convince ad buyers that it is accurate.
Use bots to apply for the open positions to waste time. Reject them all for not enough pay.
Post public info of the CEO class
Piracy
Give fake data when using all services.
Start and join boycott groups.
Use their social media against them. Eg post their dirty laundry as a comment on their post.
I’m skeptical that anything legal will work for very long because they will quickly work to make said legal action illegal.
But we can have some fun along the way, and it does change behaviour for a bit.
Send a copy of the receipt for your donation to the open source project that most closely aims to be their alternative. Explain why you’re angry in 3 sentences and do so like you are condescendingly speaking to a five year old.
Don’t use their services.
Stop using as many services as possible. It might not be funny but, I mean, what if you went to a music store and bought used CDs instead of using Spotify? Do all of that you can.
Edit: whoops, I missed the “il” part in “not illegal”. Anyway you should definitely not do the following. Allegedly doing the following would be arson, and society frowns upon such things.
Easy:
- Identify company
- Wait until it’s a weekend night. We’re not after the wage slaves after all.
- Mix polystyrene and gasoline. Remember that gasoline can melt some plastics, so if using a plastic container for mixing do a test first. You do not want napalm all over the place.
- Fill the gooey substance in glass bottles.
- Cap the bottles. (see #7)
- Drive to the company.
- Open bottles and put wicks in them. (important not to do this earlier. Driving with open gasoline containers in your car will make you drowsy and is a fire hazard)
- If you haven’t already got gloves on, put them on and wipe down the bottles - you may have to leave some at some point.
- Have accomplices trigger fire alarms all over the local fire department’s district. Either automatic fire alarms will be discarded for a bit or the marshall will be tied up investigating.
- Light a wick, throw the bottle at the company, try to get it to break a window.
- If you’re out of bottles or you see blue lights cheese it. Otherwise go back a step and repeat it.
I heard you should mix the gasoline with diesel for more mileage.
The fake name generator might be useful. There are also temporary email services for when a site account requires a confirmed email.
Sounds like it does the opposite of what OP wants:
I stopped counting after 2000+ vendors
Well, crap. So goes enshittification.
Do not use actual names, birthdays, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, etc. There’s no reason they need to know that info and I love/hate seeing physical mail and email show up with my made up info. Doesn’t work when paying for stuff though.
