> When ordering online, always, always, always use a fake number, it's not required

Don't do this if you order anything that doesn't ship small parcel. The freight company may need to contact you and it will complicate matters and delay your final delivery.

> When ordering online, always, always, always use a fake number, it's not required

Until something's gone wrong in the process and they need to call you to clarify/fix it. (happens regularly to me due to address suffixes not propagating correctly through crappy systems)

This is region dependent. In spanish speaking countries they pretty much never use email. Everyone - including the courier will just call you.

I do something similar when a site asks for my birthday, i used to pick a random date, but sonce its sometimes used to reset password or asks u to confirm i just use the first of january of the year i was born so i can make sure i remember what i put.

When birthdate is tied to an account, I pick a random one and store it alongside the username and password in KeePass. Same as the "security questions"; I make up and store nonsensical answers. E.g. "Q: What was your mother's maiden name?" "A: Blueberry pie."

I do the same thing but use KeePass’ password generator to create the answers. My mother’s maiden name will be something like “diejdJyt7ejHsud”

I do that as well, but I dread the moment I'll have to call support through no fault of my own and they'll ask me for the answers to some of these questions.

Just say, "it's a jumble of letters and numbers but I lost the USB drive where I stored all that stuff."

Most of these systems still use people who have quotas to meet, and can see all of your account details in some sort of admin panel.

I mean, probably anyone could call and start reading off the letters from "correcthorsebatterystaple" and the support tech will go "oh yeah, you're one of those people who thinks they're clever with security; here are all your account details"

Doesn't that kinda negate the goal of using a fake birth date? After all, they don't really care whether you give your real birth date, it's enough that it is the same on that other website they get your personal information from to correlate.

I don’t care if someone leaks my fake DOB in a Dropbox hack and then tries to reset my Netflix password.

Websites that use my real DOB are usually linked to my identity, so I’m much more concerned with protecting them from, eg social engineering attacks [0].

[0]: https://gizmodo.com/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-15...

Yes this is my thought as well.

I change my phone number every year and I get spam calls all the time.

>Change your credit/debit cards yearly (say to your bank you 'lost' it).

Huge shoutout to/for privacy.com. Been using for over a year now and it's been a fantastic service.