My email is whatever shit protonpass comes up with when I generate a random alias. Phone number is 3334445566 Name is: lol no Gender is undisclosed DoB is January 1st of the first year I can select. Otherwise, 1900 And income is 1.
There, free WiFi.
That said…A wifi access point that requests that info is almost certainly not private for every other trackable thing you do with that wifi, however.
It’s good practice to assume that this is true of every network you don’t control.
If it’s an open WiFi (no WPA password) packets are not encrypted anyway, so anyone on this AP can easily see everything that comes through it. A decade ago, when most websites allowed plain HTTP, there was a Firefox extension which let you hijack the Facebook or Twitter session of anyone connected to an open WiFi with a couple of clicks.
Nowadays everything is hopefully encrypted at the application level, so while attackers can see where the data goes, they can’t actually read it.
Everything you do on a public WiFi should be through a VPN anyway. Just in case you accidentally forget you are on it and log in somewhere.
I usually use:
Email - nope@nah.com
Name - Nah Nope
Gender - prefer not to say
DoB - same as you
Phone - just random digits, or if I’m feeling spicy the phone number of a guy I used to be buddies with who fucked me over
Income - never been asked for this yet, probably go with something outlandish…like 1Personally I like giving my personal data as Pope Francis.
I went to a restaurant recently that asked me to pay my bill with the QR code on the tablet. Scanned it, and the first thing it did was ask for my phone number to verify my “account” by sending me a code.
The server didn’t understand that I wasn’t going to do that, and they needed to run my credit card like normal or I wasn’t paying.
Oh man. If I need to download an app to pay for a meal I’m never going back to that place again.
usually just the website, but yes, I agree.
I’m like: “I only have a work phone, I can’t do things like that on it.”
Whip out your decoy Nokia 7110 instead.
I talked my way out of a parking ticket once. the machines were offline, and the only sticker for the app was knee level on the side. I argued a smart phone should not be a requirement to park your car here, meter cop tore the ticket up right then.
That’s why in some ways I don’t mind that my country still pays for mobile data, because I just don’t even bother at restaurants anymore “oh, I’ve run out of data, I can’t scan that, here’s my money”
Because of how severely covid lock downs hit our state, every single restaurant I’ve been to in the last 5 years has used a QR code to order and pay.
I have allergies, so this means I mostly just order black coffee when it’s QR only.
I’m not giving you all of my personal details for an overpriced $5 black coffee. The result is that I sit there with my friends, fiddling my thumbs, not buying anything.
But what’s the big deal? It’s just an account, sir. Everyone does it. It doesn’t mean anything.
These are the thoughts of people who truly have no idea what’s going on in the world, and those people are abundant.
Bro, just one more piece of info bro. Come on bro, just one more piece of your personal info and I’ll let you sign on to the “free” wifi. Bro come on bro, just one more piece of personal info, it’s no big deal for some wifi bro.
What would stop you from using random, invented data?
Don’t use random, invented data. That’s wrong. Use the real data of a ceo or other executive from a company that spammed you. Or if you have the time find out who owns the mall and use their information.
That’s so evil and so amazing
I recently did something similar. My daughter’s orthodontist practice (it’s a large office with multiple locations) from a few years ago sent a spam txt message. I tracked down the owner of the practice and called the office, “I have a new phone number. Please change it on my records.”
And gave the owner’s home number."
Sounds more like justice from down here.
But… that requires the internet to research
Asshole ExBosses are totally fair after a mandatory 3 year cooling off period.
Even better. Though it takes some work to gather that data.
info@, postmaster@, web@, abuse@, or any other mandated valid email addresses for the service that wants your data.
Any system that includes an SMTP server supporting mail relaying or delivery MUST support the reserved mailbox “postmaster” as a case-insensitive local name.
That only gives extra work to IT who are powerless to do anything.
You wouldn’t just go on the internet and lie would you?
No but lie and then go on the internet, that’s a different story
Rule of thumb on the Internet, if you can’t see how it’s payed for (subscriptions, ads, donations…) then you probably pay with your personal data.
Especially true for apps and games. “Play totally free, no annoying adds or in-app purchases” means “Here is a trojan horse pretending to be a game while farming every possible information from your device to sell to the highest bidder”.
Small shout out to Apple here, perhaps, for their little privacy report card. Here is Angry Birds 2:
A transcription app by a cool solo dev:
Y’all trust these?
As I understand it Apple is fairly good privacy-wise (at least compared to others). I wouldn’t 100% trust those cards, but I’m guessing they’re pretty accurate.
Email: Admin@ThisMall.com Address: 123 Main St Phone: 555-555-5555 DoB: 01/01/2000 Gender: other (all) Income: $3.50
I always do 1970-01-01 to confuse the developers
Now that’s good, even better if you throw some error characters into your other info
You need to replace a lot of those words with profanity to get the message across.
Even kids know how to enter fake data.
That’s when I use the oldest human invention: LYING.
Fake email, fake address, tell them I make more than the highest option they give for the income, make up the entirely unique gender of squorp, etc.
I’m pretty sure hitting someone with a rock pre-dates lying. Try that instead next time.
They don’t care. They’re just turning around and repeating your lies to whatever advertiser is so stupid as to believe their demographic sales pitch.
Hurt them by not using it. That’s the biggest number that feeds their machine.
There’s something to be said for poisoning the data. Intentionally, and consistently, enter slightly wrong information into every form you can. If it leaks, it all corroborates, but with other wrong information.
It’s definitely easier and more reliable to just pass tho.
I think if you lie and use a VPN there might be less data for them to profit from.
Walmart does similar now, though they don’t ask all that much. The bogus account I set up is…
Email: irrelevant@dispostable.com
Password: Walmart1
Name: Anonymous Human
Enjoy your anonymous free WiFi at Walmart haha!
I like noneof@yourbusiness.com, same for first/last name. Only problem is I’m not the only one so sometimes it’s already taken.
Here’s a secret those free wifi providers don’t want you to know: usually, they don’t check your email or ask you to verify it, so you can just enter suckurmomsball@gmail.com If they do show a second screen asking for an email, just create a tempmail adress on cellular and switch back to verify. It works 99.99% of the time.
Edit: you also don’t have to enter any real personal information, how would they know?
I always use famous people, just in case someone is checking the data and assumes that Tom Cruise or Sydney Sweeney decided to stop in Cambridge for a quick bite to eat in Nandos before staying in the Travelodge.
Autofill with my fake profile info.
Name: Go.
firstname: Fuck.
Email: yourself@with-gravel.comCheck email for verification link.
But the trick with these is, in order to check email they need to connect you to the internet, even if just for a minute. If you just need the internet to sync the latest IMs and emails, that is good enough.
fuckoff@domainiown.win
Yes. They deserve nothing. LIE.
This is what I do.
Today I signed into some “free” wifi as Joe mama (Joe@mama.tech)
Smooth sailing for Joe after that.
I’ve never given a real email to these. I just bash the keys on my phones with random letters and decide whether it’s going to be gmail, aol, or yahoo that day…
I just clone someone else’s already active mac address, it works every time
This is a beautifully simple solution! I hadn’t thought of that but I’ll have to keep it in mind.
Do you think you’d have to move closer to another AP? I do think a duplicate a MAC address might cause connectivity problems at least while connected to the same AP.
Oh, it’s not a swindle. What you do is, see, you give 'em all your credit card numbers, and if one of them is lucky, they’ll send you a prize!
On some public networks, my Wireguard VPN just doesn’t work. Although I can connect to my server using SSH, so I assume the network was configured to block certain ports or how else can it block VPN connections?
Many networks block UDP ports, which is what wireguard uses. If you can configure the serverside part of the VPN, you could try running it on port 123, which is used for the network time protocol (ntp), which also uses UDP and is open nearly everywhere
Are you familiar with Tailscale? I think it reverts to tunneling over WireGuard over HTTPS in cases like this — I might be wrong, but I might block UDP on myself to test this out.
No, you’re right! They have the best name, DERP relays lol. When tailscale can’t find a node over UDP , it switches over to TCP and runs the encrypted traffic through the DERP relays.
having no idea what the fuck these letters mean I think this dude is correct
