Ask HN: What bogus information do you provide?

4 points by mikecoles 5y ago ↗ HN

The idea of having an "internet birthday" seems less popular than it was years ago. To reduce the risk of your data being exposed, you provided inaccurate information. Some would use the first or last day of the month instead of their actual birthdate or change the year by a digit.

With some internet users seeing a rise in age verification requirements, are any common birthdates being used to stuff the system with inaccurate information?

If you only need to verify you're over 18, does it make a difference if you say you're 80?

3 comments

[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] thread

crackercrews 5y ago ↗

I give fake email addresses to get access to public wifi networks. Interestingly, some systems appear to have a list of well-known fake addresses, which they reject, including foo@bar.com.

mikecoles 5y ago ↗

uce@ftc.gov was another that was used for junk sign-ups in the past. spam@uce.gov is a replacement in the US. While not the intended use of the email address, it saved the effort of bouncing the email there.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2004/07/ftc-u...

epc 5y ago ↗

Unless there is a legitimate legal requirement for an accurate birth date, I use the date on the Julian calendar. It’s close enough to give an accurate age while being far enough off to not easily line up with my real identity.

I have a variety of catchall domains at my disposal so I make up random throwaway email addresses as necessary.

I assume my primary public email address will get leaked left and right by well meaning novice database developers so I don’t use it for anything of any financial or legal consequence.

Finally, I have additional internet identities (complete with gmail, yahoo, Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, etc accounts) that I've been maintaining since the 1990s that I use for things I don't want linked back to my primary account (all legal, of course).