Saturday, March 5th, 2011 (
4 comments)
All of the following advice is based on the premise that you will only use it to protect your privacy and not to violate rules of ethics or legality.
What Is It?
What I call a privacy alias is a complete profile of your data: name, address, phone number, social security number, birthplace, etc… except all fake. Completely made up. False.
For example, I have real data. But it's nothing that I'll share with you or most other people without specific need (since I subscribe to The Geek Privacy Principle). The point is that you don't want to give people your real data is you can avoid it. But the problem is sometimes you don't have a choice but to give up information.
When to Use It
2497 Milford Street
Campton, NH 03223
| Website | BinocularDistributor.com |
| Email Address | DannyABlair@example.com |
| Password | ieC3ohPaz9 |
| Phone | 603-726-4397 |
| Mother's Maiden name | Pollak |
| Birthday | September 15, 1945 |
| Visa | 4916 1711 7909 3400 |
| Expires | 7/2011 |
| SSN | 732-00-5043 |
| Occupation | Prepress technician |
| UPS Tracking Number | 1Z 236 756 94 1867 824 3 |
You're not going to use some of this data like the Visa or the UPS number (those are for people who want to test web ordering systems), but the rest is a good start if you're having trouble thinking up your own data to use. The main issue is that the address, phone number and Social Security Number may belong to some real person.
If you want to be safe, use Fakenamegenerator.com for ideas, but use my technique instead:
Creating Fakes More Carefully
Instead of creating completely fake data that's harder to remember and more likely to match some other real person (which then makes YOU the problem for someone else), I recommend you use part of your real data for your privacy alias.
Fake Name
Because it's too confusing to use a fake first name (unless you're used to going by two different names), I tend to use my real first name. My alias last name can be based on your middle name, a nick-name, a pet's name, a famous person's name or anything else you want.
Fake Address
For the address, I chose a fun word (ex: crater) and decided that would be my street name. Then I just checked some cities on Google maps and tried to find a street with that name. When I found a city that did not have a street with that name, that was the one I chose.
Fake Phone
If they don't use it as they say, there's no harm
I'm often told that they "will never use my phone number to call me" so why not set them up for some retribution if it turns out they're lying? I tell them my number is 900-900-9000.
If they don't use it as they say, there's no harm. If they do call it, they'll be helped by a very friendly person who will happily charge them by the minute 🙂
Fake E-mail
You should already have multiple e-mail accounts for this purpose, but you feel obligated to provide an e-mail and you never want any communication from the asker, just make up whatever you want. You're more likely to avoid a real person's e-mail if you use null@anything.com. Null is a special work in networking that will never go to a real person's e-mail.
Fake Birthday
This one's pretty easy. Pick someone who's close to you or someone famous that you admire and use their day and month with your year.
Fake SSN
The trick I usually recommend is to use your real SSN with the middle two digits replaced by 0. There are three reasons for this:
- It's hard to remember a completely fake SSN
- If challenged in some way, it's easy to claim innocence and that it was entered wrong or a computer glitch led to the "error".
- You will never end up using someone else's SSN this way.
The one problem with Fakenamegenerator.com is that they don't make any efforts to create SSN's that don't already belong to someone else. They depend on the odds of the SSN not matching your fake name, but this method is safer because any all 0 field in an SSN automatically makes the number invalid in the system.
Fake Challenge Questions
As part of your profile, make sure you have answers for all the common challenge questions you'll see on websites like:
- What's your mother's maiden name?
- Where were you born?
- What was the brand of your first car?
- What was the name of your favorite pet?
Functionally speaking, this information is used to help you access your account if you forget a password. What what if someone who knows you uses it instead? Have you ever known someone who's account got hijacked?
Obama, Sarah Palin, Britney Spears, and others have all data brokers, almost anyone can get it too. It's just never smart to use real information so have some fake stuff prepared.
 |  | Even if you use the same fake information everywhere, that's better than using real data. However, even better than that is to use different data everywhere. If you do, be sure to store it securely so you don't forget it.. |
Summary
Once you've taken the trouble to make a fake profile, your goal is to use it forever (or as long as you can) so give it good protection. I store mine with my passwords in an encrypted file so if you don't have software to encrypt yet, maybe it's time you go get some.
Share This
Is this ok to do when making a purchase online–to just randomly fill in the info with true e-mail but random name, address…no intention of fraud, but so they don’t have all my info and then pass it along to third parties. Is it legal?
I imagine that you’re going to have to give them your actual address or one of a friend/family member/neighbor if you want to receive your item. As for legality, I don’t believe there’s any law that requires you provide accurate information to stores when purchasing so long as you legally pay with your money and not someone else’s.
For instance, people can use fake names when checking into hotels, people ship items to other people’s addresses all the time, and there’s certainly no reason you can’t provide just your initials instead of a full name for a shipment.
I’m certainly no lawyer, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting into any kind of issue from withholding unneeded data or using psuedo-information. About the only thing that comes to mind is that if you’re using a credit card, there may be issues if the names don’t match up. Your mileage may vary.
For me, I give them no more than I think they absolutely need. If in doubt, I can call the company and talk to the operators about whether they must have real information or not and what the consequences are if I don’t provide (which in many cases is none).
If this is something that really concerns you, I would check with a real lawyer.
(you just got my fake alias! lol)
I’ve just been reading your website for the past hour, and really don’t have the time to do so. But you have a ton of very quality information!
Albeit when it starts to get too thorough, most people just don’t care enough, even though they should. It would be awesome to mention which are easiest to implement and most important when choosing articles. IMAO anyway.
I’m definitely going to have to start implementing this. I sorta started to a while back, but keep getting lazy about it. Thanks for the tips and motivation!
i think i read it all,i got out of order.i just want to thank you for the info and your time.well explained .i will definately share.