this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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I'm getting a bit sick of large corporations a) demanding excess data as a condition of doing business with me, b) allowing it to be stolen, and c) giving zero fucks about it.

What are some things that us netizens can do to make our displeasure known.

Extra points for funny ideas.

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[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago

Use bots to apply for the open positions to waste time. Reject them all for not enough pay.

Post public info of the CEO class

Piracy

Give fake data when using all services.

Start and join boycott groups.

Use their social media against them. Eg post their dirty laundry as a comment on their post.

Stop using as many services as possible. It might not be funny but, I mean, what if you went to a music store and bought used CDs instead of using Spotify? Do all of that you can.

[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago

Start Self hosting. Keeping my data at home is how I'm sticking it to the man these days.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago

Report bugs that don't actually exist. Keep reporting the same bug from different emails. Works especially well for apps.

[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Do not use actual names, birthdays, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, etc. There's no reason they need to know that info and I love/hate seeing physical mail and email show up with my made up info. Doesn't work when paying for stuff though.

[–] yournamehere@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

luigi had an idea

If anyone has one specifically for airlines, I'd love to hear it! Got plenty of time to read the comments with my cancelled flight

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 23 points 1 day ago

If a company is publicly traded, then all leaked individuals are given 50.1% controlling stock in the company, split among the victims with new stocks created for them, with unclaimed stocks held in a trust controlled by anyone that did respond to claim stocks. They can sell the stocks, or drive the company into the ground out of spite. Maybe even both.

Companies not publicly traded have 3 months to make all code used, trademarked material, and patents open source in perpetuity, and 1 year to convert their corporate structure into a non-profit.

Regardless of the size of the company, the CEO, CTO, and board must eat their weight in fried bugs. They get to pick the type of bug from a list of 5 options, and any seasoning they want. Live streams of the bug eating will be monetized and the proceeds given to orphans, under the title of "It's not a bug, its a feature."

[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.world 148 points 2 days ago (7 children)
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[–] BrotherL0v3@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago

Not exactly what you're looking for, but Ad-Nauseum is a nice way to inject a ton of garbage into the data corps collect.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 94 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Use EICAR test strings as your password.

If they store your password in plain text the AV will lock the user database.

If your password gets leaked and they are using bad password security, when your password is cracked the AV will isolate the file.

[–] HootinNHollerin@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Being a non-programmer I had to look up what that is

[–] shrodes@lemmy.world 72 points 1 day ago

Bold of you to assume a corporation storing passwords in plain text would be using AV

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (2 children)

According to EICAR's specification the antivirus detects the test file only if it starts with the 68-byte test string and is not more than 128 bytes long. As a result, antiviruses are not expected to raise an alarm on some other document containing the test string.

This won't work, assuming the database file is more than 128 bytes long

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[–] QualifiedKitten@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

ELI5 please? I've read the other replies, but would love to understand a bit more.

EICAR test strings are strings of text that can be used to test an antivirus. Basically, you bury the file somewhere, and see if your AV picks it up. The joke being that if they’re storing your password in plaintext (a big no-no from a security standpoint) then their AV will clamp down on the database once you create your account and the test string is embedded.

It wouldn’t work in this instance, unfortunately; EICAR test strings are only meant to work when embedded in files that are shorter than 128 bytes. And every database is almost certainly larger than that.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

Ah... "advice" consisting of "I've heard of a thing"

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[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Edit: whoops, I missed the "il" part in "not illegal". Anyway you should definitely not do the following. Allegedly doing the following would be arson, and society frowns upon such things.

Easy:

  1. Identify company
  2. Wait until it's a weekend night. We're not after the wage slaves after all.
  3. Mix polystyrene and gasoline. Remember that gasoline can melt some plastics, so if using a plastic container for mixing do a test first. You do not want napalm all over the place.
  4. Fill the gooey substance in glass bottles.
  5. Cap the bottles. (see #7)
  6. Drive to the company.
  7. Open bottles and put wicks in them. (important not to do this earlier. Driving with open gasoline containers in your car will make you drowsy and is a fire hazard)
  8. If you haven't already got gloves on, put them on and wipe down the bottles - you may have to leave some at some point.
  9. Have accomplices trigger fire alarms all over the local fire department's district. Either automatic fire alarms will be discarded for a bit or the marshall will be tied up investigating.
  10. Light a wick, throw the bottle at the company, try to get it to break a window.
  11. If you're out of bottles or you see blue lights cheese it. Otherwise go back a step and repeat it.
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[–] helmet91@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

Don't use their services.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 87 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

More in the spirit of this, prefer and actively seek out alternatives that collect as little or even no data at all and test to make sure they run without internet access. If they give you a hard time or straight up dont work without an internet connection when they ought to be able to, chuck em

Edit: also call them out in reviews. Why you collect data guys, dont you want my money?

[–] Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This has been the go-to for decades and it's not working. I feel like we need to be prepared to engage with the system, but make it clear we are not just passive consumers. Something that becomes viral maybe?....

[–] derek@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago

The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.

Unionizing every industry so there is nowhere for the owning class to practice naked greed sans consequence or feel any pressure to do otherwise is our only answer. It's not one which matches the aesthetic or level of ease most are looking for. So that's the current goal. Shift public perception of unions and collective bargaining from "talking about that will get me fired" to "unionization is essential for any working class person". Shift the current climate from "violence is inevitable" to "striking is necessary".

Our owners cannot steal our wages if we refuse to produce goods and services for them. Yes this means workers will experience pain. Not being able to pay bills, buy groceries, etc. This is the intention of the current economic reality we find ourselves locked in mortal combat with. Keeping us too scared to bite the hand that feeds for us to realize we can starve out our oppressors by doing nothing and being loud about it. Picketing is a siege on the fortress of oligarchy.

They concentrate wealth like dragons protecting a hoard not for the love of money. It's not about the money. It's about insulating themselves so securely from such a siege that we starve before they do. History tells us that's a winning strategy. It's how the aristocracy survived and evolved into the modern era. Knowing this we can reason about what is necessary to avoid repeating the past.

One may argue for governing reforms, better voting systems, government-backed protections for workers, more public sector jobs/industries, kai ta hetera, et cetera, and so on... And these things may help voters weed out elitists/sympathizers or insulate an industry for a few decades. They are placations though. Not solutions. These capitulations leave workers in stasis and package today's injustice up as an inheritance for those next in the human assembly line. That sounds like deja vu to me.

Similarly goes violent direct action. Yes, the civil rights movement was lifted by the pressure or the threat of violence from aligned and allied movements and, yes, such methods may yield short term results in any righteous struggle. No, workers do not require the same assistance for success. Labor is not fighting against any government. Governance is the medium through which the owning class wishes to arbitrate. Refuse this entrapment. No one is coming to save us.

Organize, vocalize, and strike, or lose.

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[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 41 points 1 day ago (4 children)

If you send back one of those reply mail envelopes it costs them money. Stuff those envelopes with junk and send them back.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't get many of them anymore, but when I do, I mail them back with a little slip of paper inside that says "poop".

[–] Elaine@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

This brings me so much joy.

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The fake name generator might be useful. There are also temporary email services for when a site account requires a confirmed email.

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Sounds like it does the opposite of what OP wants:

I stopped counting after 2000+ vendors

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[–] bufalo1973@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If someone stoles the data then the corp can't be trusted. Punishment: erase ALL records from ALL of their databases and forbid that corp to take data for at least one year. The time would depend on the severity of the leak. If the leak if catastrophic, 10 years minimum.

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

he doesn't rename low res episodes of the golden girls to "tax return[year].docx" and hide them in plain sight.

[–] granolabar@kbin.melroy.org 48 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Deny engagement and profit. It a takes a mind set change but a lot of shit can go avoided.

Streamimg can be replaced with Yarr

Use products you have longer until they break or not longer don't fit use case

Start your shopping on the second market.

Generally Corpo's and government are centralized and get benefits of that system, working class is decentralized naturally so we need to lean into that.

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[–] fool@programming.dev 22 points 1 day ago

Make your data useless or wrong.

More passively, there's probably an oddly large amount of John Does born on January 1, 2000 ;)

More offensively, anti-image-gen data poisoning such as Nightshade exists. It's well-defended against IIRC so hopefully someone can Cunningham's Law correct me. And this is also more solo of a movement (as opposed to gaining mass support for something)

[–] stinerman@midwest.social 24 points 1 day ago

As others have said, the best instances of direct action are illegal.

[–] RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com 26 points 1 day ago
  1. Get into politics
  2. Get elected
  3. Rip them a new one

*might take some time

[–] halloween_spookster@lemmy.world 33 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm skeptical that anything legal will work for very long because they will quickly work to make said legal action illegal.

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[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 38 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Send a copy of the receipt for your donation to the open source project that most closely aims to be their alternative. Explain why you're angry in 3 sentences and do so like you are condescendingly speaking to a five year old.

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[–] WhatSay@slrpnk.net 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Use AI to generate false info to feed into their database

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I love putting wrong AI slop in every optional field or space I can get away with for profiles and accounts that don't really matter.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 day ago

If an extension exists for this I'll use it

[–] just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe pirate your media and donate the money to open source alternatives

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