2026-06-11 / updated 2026-06-17 / tags: privacy, projects, quick reads, sidebar updates

Advertising. None of us ever agreed to it. We all hate it. Yet since the Internet established itself as the most dominant technological force since electrical grids, advertising has managed to thrust its tendrils into every possible space you could think of, and many, many more you couldn't. Far from a benign infection, its negative effects on people are thorough and wide-ranging.
If you've ever signed up for a hot new app for selling your used clothes, a multiplayer online role-playing game, or any connected service in between, you were asked for some information. Username, date of birth, email address, and often even more identifying info is demanded as the price of entry. Culturally, we are so used to giving up this information over the Internet that we do it without hesitation. Besides, what else are we going to do – lie?
Well, yes, we're going to lie. Introducing identity-spinner.

identity-spinner is a really simple tool designed for lying. More specifically, it takes info from reliable data sources and uses it to generate realistic data for fake people to be given to online services for account signups. Or for anything you want, really!^[1] The README will give you a rundown of exactly where that information is sourced, and the top of it links to the live app where you can experiment.
As is written in that document (and copied to a slot in the app itself), information gathered by advertisers from your devices can reveal a lot about you. Here's some examples of where that information ends up...

• Target figured out a teenager was pregnant before her dad did, sending her coupons for baby clothes.
• Chatrie v. United States, currently being considered by the Supreme Court, has massive implications for whether geofence warrants violate the 4th Amendment. In this case, a criminal conviction was secured on the basis of information found when law enforcement demanded Google fork over info on anyone whose phone reported being near the crime scene around the time it occurred.
• ICE bought access to a tool that tracks location data from hundreds of millions of phones many times a day. If you thought that adtech data collection wasn't a serious and potentially life-threatening concern when you opened this blog post, hopefully these three examples have shown that the impacts of data leakage are real, physical, and sometimes brutal.
  But here's the neat part: A lot of that data is voluntarily given. We can still push back against the normalization of giving away our data. I created identity-spinner because I knew all of this bad stuff was happening and wanted to be more secure with my online activity, but coming up with new names, usernames, and birthdays on the spot is hard, since humans aren't random.
  From what I know of all the people who don't get so far as setting up a password manager, most folks find keeping themselves secure to be more trouble than it's worth. I really want to lower the barrier to entry and make myself and everyone around me as secure as possible with as little pain as possible, and education (like this blog post) and tooling (like identity-spinner) are two main angles I'm approaching it with.
  I've been working on this a bit and have some more features coming down the pike, with a focus on things that are actually useful, like more types of personal info and being able to load the app offline. In the meantime, I'm very curious to hear your thoughts... from whatever moniker!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I've added 404 Media to my sidebar^[2]. Their journalism has inspired much of my strategizing and they deserve lots more attention and praise than they get right now. If you have the means, consider joining their paid subscription, which gets you lots of cool perks like access to their "FOIA Forum" on top of unrestricted viewing of some of their biggest stories.

Note 6/17/2026: This post initially stated the conviction related to the Chatrie v. United States suit was related to a "violent crime", which is a mischaracterization. I have corrected the error and sincerely apologize for framing the incident as such.