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I’ve been recommending the use of consistent lies about name and date of birth to online systems since Eternal September began. Very few sites and systems justi
by inopinatus 3mo ago
I’ve been recommending the use of consistent lies about name and date of birth to online systems since Eternal September began. Very few sites and systems justify accurate PII, and even for those I often still maintain dual accounts/profiles as necessary.
- greengreengrass 3mo agoCompletely agree. I use randomness for all of these now – plausible randomness if it’s possible I’ll have to give it over a phone.
- Cider9986 3mo agostrongphrase.net is good for this.
- rlpb 3mo agoI like using a date of birth of 1 January. It's plausible but also hopefully suspicious how many people seem to be born that day if others do the same.
- cheschire 3mo agoBut if an attacker gets your fake birthday and uses that to successfully reset credentials on another site that uses the same fake birthday? At some point it becomes your birthday of record as far as the internet is concerned. Doesn’t matter what the actual record says.
- dannyw 3mo agoNo service should use date of birth for password resets.
- rlpb 3mo agoIf an attacker can do that, they could also do that with my real birthday had I used that. My birthday isn't a secret against anyone who wants to look hard enough. Therefore this method doesn't provide any kind of security against attackers gated only on knowing my registered birthday. I never claimed that it did.
- samspot 3mo agoThe purpose of the fake birthday is not to protect random website credentials. It's to prevent someone with that data from walking into my bank and impersonating me. I started giving a fake birthday after being shocked by how little info some organizations needed to authenticate me.
- cheschire 3mo ago“My voice is my passport. Verify me.”
- richrichardsson 3mo agoSame, my D.O.B. is 1/1/1970 for anything that doesn't justify having the real deal.
- indigo945 3mo agoThat's also great for integration testing their systems, if they have any code in a language where datetimes are a value type.
- toilet 3mo agoI heard from a number of Syrian refugees that this is actually very common in countries like theirs, where births may not be recorded, records are lost or destroyed. Some people don't even know their exact date of birth and they would typically enter January 1st on forms like this too.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- brk 3mo agoI use the 1st of my birth month. Slightly less suspicious? It's at least a little easier to remember. Generate fake profiles and identities usually is easier when you have bits that are rooted in your actual reality. Like, you have the same zodiac sign either way in this case, so you don't have to remember two of everything. Or if you're talking about a birthday trip, or related birthday thing from the past, details about the weather would be consistent, etc.
- tmikaeld 3mo agoThat never works on Facebook though, because as soon as a ”friend” reports that ”I’m not me” then the account will be permanently banned. That also triggers for photos that’s not genuinely me, like a pet or drawing as portrait.
- willis936 3mo agoThere is an easy solution: don't log into facebook. Anyone you want to talk to on there has a phone.
- Dumblydorr 3mo agoAre many folks on HN using Facebook? To me, most tech savvy folks I know left it a decade ago. All the FB users I know are 60+
- qingcharles 3mo agoThere are honestly some really good groups on there. Sadly, frustratingly, Facebook Groups has replaced the forums of olde in a lot of situations.
- graysnow86 3mo agoUnfortunately, a lot of college-age people I know are getting accounts simply for access to Marketplace, which is still unmatched compared to other local platforms for buy and sell.
- TheScaryOne 3mo agoMarketplace has taken over literally all of the other reselling websites and apps. Try finding a decent car on Craigslist today.
- brk 3mo agoNever? Facebook is pretty overrun with what are basically fake profiles. Hell, I've been curating an alter ego on Facebook for over a decade. Built up a profile with several dozen "friends" that are all kind of interconnected and regional, but of course none of them have ever met "me" IRL, and the profile picture is a funny-ish celeb pic. Facebook has millions of legit users that are "friend collector" types, and won't think twice about engaging with an account that gently strokes their online ego with likes, "Happy Birthdays", etc.
- AtHeartEngineer 3mo agoJan 1st, 1984 every time
- croes 3mo agoApril 1st, 1984
- AtHeartEngineer 3mo agoeven better