For the email, you can use an email alias service like Addy or SimpleLogin. They’re both open-source and offer free tiers. I never give out my real email to anyone now except actual contacts.
After that, I think a VPN would probably still work to disguise what you’re doing from Walmart, but I’m not a 100% certain on that so I won’t link any.
But yeah, definitely use email alias wherever you can.
I do.
I use SimpleLogin and ProtonMail.
Some sites have I’ll actually know you’re using SimpleLogin though and just say no, but they’re few and far between.
You could also use your own domain if you have one or buy a cheap one.
Then you can create as many as you like and just kill them as and when you need.
SimpleLogin has plugins for all browsers and phones so it’s not too difficult to create new addresses.
just use a throwaway private email?
Junk email + VPN, but I’ve found that most free wifi services like this explicitly try to inhibit the functionality of mobile VPN clients.
I think the point of this post is all the stuff below the email field. Yikes.
That data isn’t nothing, either. Over ten years ago, Target was able to use shoppers habits to determine when women were pregnant, sometimes even before the women knew.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
Imagine how much more robust this has gotten 10 years later.
Not really. With https luckily being the default, at most they could get the sites you were going to (I don’t think dnss is dead, but it’s been very slow to grow unfortunately).
They could probably see if you’re checking Amazon or Google, but wouldn’t be able to see what you’re looking at exactly. Theoretically they could use cameras and or triangulation to see what you’re in front of when you use the Internet, but a VPN would still show traffic so they’d know you’re looking up something.
The big thing this would do is act like a loyalty card… They give you some amount of benefit in exchange for tracking your purchases in ever higher detail. Mostly it’s just like that, except they’d also be able to see how long you are in the store, and ideally they can link it to your purchases so they can infer more about it
FWIW, I wouldn’t only consider giving them a disposable email
This is a fantastic read.
I remember febreeze coming out and being like, that would be cool but you can’t trust ads and it sounds like total BS. I knew they added a scent, but I had not idea about the subtle social manipulation that they used to shift people’s habits.
Speaking of habits, this is the first time I have heard about all the science involved in studying and breaking them.
Thank you for that link. Definitely going to save it.
