Rowland wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Mar 2019 11:44:49 -0600
> "Jamey Fletcher" <jamey@???> wrote:

>> I have it here on my Gentoo install - and /var/lib/dbus/machine-id is
>> a symlink to it. It's basically the same length as a MD5SUM - why
>> not just standardize on the MD5SUM of an empty 0-byte file (
>> d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e ) and tell them to take a running
>> leap from the ISS?

> Now that's an idea, if they are tracking us, one ID will appear to be
> everywhere at once, that should confuse them ;-)

I had, at one point, proposed to a friend that we set up a tool that
would, any time a tracking cookie was set by DoubleClick or one of the
other tracking companies, upload it to a pool, from which anytime
DoubleClick requested said cookie from your machine, it would retrieve one
at random and return it, poisoning their database. Probably have to do it
with a local proxy server, but seems feasible. (Kinda like the
winnow-and-chaff satellite internet service I wanted to propose. You send
your data, encrypted, up to the service, and it's all uploaded to the
satellite, and broadcast everywhere, along with all of the other data
being sent, mixed up randomly. If the other end could decode it, it was
for them, everything else was just semi-random noise to make it more
difficult for the Nosy Spy Agency to classify and decrypt. Of course,
from a few years on, I don't think it would be quite that easy, but ...
maybe, with public-key encryption?)