Should you leave red herrings about yourself online?

Of course. This was the encouraged behavior in the early 2k. There were little PSA's about it online. You never put your real info online, because there are crazy people out there that will use it.

I've tried to explain to friends and family that they shouldn't put their first, middle, and last name, all employment info, city, state, etc in their social media bio, and use the same headshot in all their accounts, but they seem to think the sociability/sanity filter that exists in their immediate circle somehow applies to the entire population on the internet.

Derek Sivers is of the opinion that a fake persona is better than not sharing any details [1]:

> Create and post a back-story to answer (instead of avoid) the frequently asked questions.

1: https://sive.rs/anon

This is an AI-generated article on an obvious spam blog that also features such bangers as "Best VPNs in 2026 for privacy and security", "Best crypto hardware wallets in 2026", etc. I'll still engage because I guess that's what we do on HN right now. If you have a single, stable online identity, it doesn't matter how much noise you inject, simply because you can't avoid linking that identity to yourself - through the social graph, through photos, through interests, etc.

Your best defense is to use stable identities only for the things where keeping a historical record of your interactions is important to you. So sure, your GitHub portfolio (in the pre-LLM era, I guess), your research papers, maybe LinkedIn. But political flame wars on Reddit? Change accounts and delete comments aggressively, the only value of keeping it around is helping the bad guys.

I had the good sense to use a fake name long ago when I first signed up for facebook. A handful of my friends did the same. Over the years it has paid off in terms of people I don't know not being able to look me up. I'm also lucky to have a very common name. I am very un-googlable unless you know actual details about my professional life, in which case you can learn a bit more about what I do for work, but nothing else.

I also have a secondary facebook account with my real name whose "friends" are only random acquaintances who have bothered trying to connect with me over the years. I have used this in the past when potential employers, or border guards, have asked about my online presence.

I've been online since I was young and deep dark secrets about me are contained and findable on old forum databases and fragments of lost proto-social networks. I might be over-confident, but I'm almost sure not even palantir knows.

I find that at least for the goofy “look up anyone and brace yourself” data hoovering companies having a super common name means my info gets muddled in with a ton of other people’s.

Everyone legally change their name to the current most common name.

In my experience as a former astronaut, international spy, and traveler to half the countries in the world, the jury is still out.

Where are some good places to plant false data?

Insanely attractive people follow me around constantly and I need some more privacy.

This article reminded me of seeing this in GH trending repositories last month: https://github.com/soxoj/maigret

"For educational and lawful purposes only"

I had to quit Large Penis Club, the parking lots were too small for my automobile.

Depends. Does that include making questionable Google searches about hundreds of different crime plots so that government handlers get super confused later on down the line?

Gotta make at least one-bank-heist-search a month.

Prolific AI blog giving advice about not trying to deceive AI so that AI gets the most pristine and valuable information.

As a Texan, minority owned business living in alaska using a VPN via the artic circle through the EU GDPR, I think everyone should be their authentic self.

yes.