[Nextgrid]

Alternatively, use them pseudonymously? There's little reason any of these companies need to know your real identity. This will both reduce the likelihood of ICE finding your account from a real-life interaction, as well as reduce the likelihood of ICE finding your real-life identity if they do get your account data (they'd at least need to dig through it more than just going by first/last name on the account itself).

[sneak]

You can’t do that. If you think you can, you haven’t tried recently.

They all require phone numbers, and they almost all require phone numbers tied to ID-based names. They require CC even when you aren’t buying stuff. It’s very difficult even for experts to achieve truly pseudonymous use.

[Nextgrid]

A prepaid SIM or burner phone can still be purchased no? I believe the CC requirement can be bypassed if you create your Apple ID from trying to "purchase" a free app (or for the accounts that do require payment, I wonder if a gift card can be used).

[sneak]

You’re leaking your IP+timestamp, which is a physical address. Now try making an account from a VPN IP and a burner number.

It always gets tied back to your ID.

[JohnMakin]

> (they'd at least need to dig through it more than just going by first/last name on the account itself).

FYI this is beyond trivial and automated to the nth degree. There is so much more to go off of than some form fields to uniquely identify a person.

[fc417fc802]

For linking activity back to your person? Without name, payment details, photos of face, or IRL social graph the easiest path that comes to mind is IP address. But that's going to involve additional inquiries and is likely ambiguous (unless you live alone, but determining that is again more work).

[JohnMakin]

“allow google to search for devices on your network?”

I’m not trying to be condescending here, but I’m just asking what someone thinks is happening here and what they can do with information scanned on your network.

[fc417fc802]

I don't follow how that's relevant? In terms of the information yielded by an administrative subpoena of an account will that even appear? I'm not clear how the result of the scan is being used.

Suppose the data is retained in association with your pseudonymous account. So now in addition to my IP they have, what, the internal IPs and device names from my LAN? How does that lead directly to me without significant additional effort? I think their best option is still hitting up my ISP to get the billing info and service address of the account.

[gizzlon]

Just off the top of my head:

Here two other devices, that we know who belongs to, daily connecting to the wifi as yours

[JohnMakin]

use it as a thought experiment i guess. your devices will advertise themselves to your local network and are easily fingerprintable to any device with network permissions and talk back a lot more than they should. The only point I’m trying to make is that you can’t fool this kind of with filling in form that’s wrong.