Privacy through data poisoning

General
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I posted a while back a link to a tool called AdNauseam

Despite the understandable critique, I think what makes this tool interesting is the idea of “fighting back” by overwhelming data collectors with useless spam. Which reminds me of Operation Troll The NSA, that was launched right after the Snowden leaks.

I don’t think this is a well-covered topic. For example, I could only find this article: How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you | MIT Technology Review talking about it.

Example application of this is increasing the circle of people you do online payments with. i.e: if you start using Zelle more often for paying strangers/stores, then in case you needed to Zelle a friend, that friend will “mix” into that group of people and won’t be a conspicuous. Of course, you have to take care of other metadata collection methods like messaging, but it’s only a step in “fighting back”.

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In theory, it seems good. But in practice, I am also wondering to what extent, the positioning is possible. Data collection mechanisms are becoming too sophisticated, so this poisoning can also make us more unique like happening in extensions.

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Ad Nauseum works against trackers and CDNs

What about removing your self from the internet , then reappear in 5 different styles , all your name but different features and styles.

Basically polluting the pool with some LinkedIn and FB accounts that aren’t you.

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I think about this sort of this more along the lines of walking down the street with a very obvious carnival mask.
Sure they can’t see you’re face, but if you’re walking into each store in a mall and announcing yourself as a different person someone is going to notice. In large part because you’re behavior is nothing like anyone else’s.

The best case scenario here is that the ad platform can’t track the fact that you specifically are clicking on all of the ads and gets paid for each click. Which funds more advanced tracking.

Websites have access to hardware information used to render and size the browser. Combined with a handful of websites you use and whatever IP address you have for a browsing session it isn’t that hard to figure out a unique fingerprint that can link a great many of the things you do to each other over time.