I was signing up for a free service yesterday on the web, not even sure what it was, and the required fields they wanted were my birth date, gender, and phone. So, as usual, I made up a birth date, the same made up birth date I always give. I always put that I'm female, even though I'm not, and I give them some phone number in Sand Diego that I used to have in the mid 1980's. Those poor people may have been getting calls because of me for years now.
But seriously, what value does a website get out of that. How many people do they actually think will give them their *real* birth date? Gender, well maybe. Phone, probably not. And what do they do with it? People are getting more savvy with their online identity. Unless you win the Ethiopian National Lottery of $250,000,000 , in which case people still fall for the "it will only cost you $2000 to get it" scam. Good thing the Powerball Lottery only costs us $1 to play :) Please don't give these sites your information. And if you absolutely need to create an account, make it up. That's what I say. How will they ever know?
Friday, June 22, 2007
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I arrived here from Problogger's charity giveaway. I saw this post and had to comment that it's so wrong to use an old phone number. Those poor people that may have your number! LOL!
ReplyDeleteI always give out the unused telephone exchange (for example: 555-0000), like is used on tv shows etc. That way I know I'm not giving out someone's real number. And yes, they do get used. I recently had to change my cell phone number because of telemarketers when I'd inadvertantly let Google toolbar fill in a form for me (and didn't check). My bad, but...
Nice site by the way, and good luck with the contest.