this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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Privacy

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I want to poison as much of my online data as I can, and I know that companies can get it anyway if I delete it, but if I were to spam sheer volume, it would cost more than it’s worth to try and sort it.

Dad uses windows and the main device I use is his laptop, and I understand that Microsoft scrapes everything they can. He’s going to reset his laptop soon, so all the junk is erased, but would it be possible to temporarily poison most data on there (from ms perspective) until it’s reset?

Would it be possible to do that on other things too, say corporate owned software, social media, etc?

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[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The data has already been scrapped, processed, categorized and indexed. This is quite literally true.

Do not worry about it, and simply try to not give them much from now on.

Also filling the internet with junk is how our best ever collective project dies. Don't be a part of that.

[–] Camille_Jamal@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I don't mean flood on user side, I meant spamming data scraped by corporate. If it's too expensive for corporate to clean up vs how much it's sold for, they won't bother at some point. It's already been stolen... That's only true for the data that already exists.

Kinda like if you had a bunch of bots tied to the same IP as you, and you tell them to generate random searches, click random sites, etc, but never post/comment/vote on anything. They're all tied to the same address, and at some point, it will be to costly to continue stealing data, cleaning it up, and selling it than it will be worth.

They'd either try and clean it up (costs too much, may potentially give up) or stop stealing your data (consumer wins)

I won't spam online, but I don't want corporate having scary accurate info/data about me. I'd only want spam going to corporate, not to people.

Do not worry about it, and simply try to not give them much from now on.

Fair, buuuuuuut...

If you hide as much info as you can, whatever info they can get (likely through illegal means) is going to be accurate. They may have less info, but it is all stuff you definitely did (unless you do both methods at once)

What I'm going for is more I prefer to occasionally waste some corporate time, but the user experience isn't worsened rather than I will do whatever it takes to ruin megacorps

Either way, have a great day