The Data You Don't Give Away is Your Advantage
Yesterday morning a rather typical salesperson with a kit showed up at the door. He moved in like a conspicuous phantom. It was not expected. He started to ask all sorts of questions. The issue wasn't that he was an imposter or social engineer representing himself as something else, under false pretences etc. The issue was, and still is, he held a digital device and started asking my wife all sorts of questions. I interrupted them several times as he was asking personal questions; I also asked him where that data would be fed to and whether it would end up in some server of "Google" or "Amazon".
Aside from a real, potent risk of falling for scams (which this one was not), there really is nothing to be gained by giving data to random people at the door or over the phone. There's a polite way to turn them away. They're not your clients or friends or patients or whatever. They get paid to phone or visit you, whereas you do not. At best, they are time-wasters.
It would not be unprecedented to say that data you consider innocuous or useless today would, some day in the future, potentially be used to discriminate against you. That sort of thing happens all the time because companies change, data gets sold, new governments get elected etc.
Please, stop sharing data that does not need to be shared. Supplying false data isn't the best solution because, despite it "poisoning" the pool, it can inadvertently be used negatively in the future, based on false assumptions.
If some place somewhere ("out there", e.g. a restaurant) asks you for a phone number, it would only be fair to politely ask, "WHY?"
If someone shows up at the door and asks about your bills, what do you stand to gain by sharing such information? What is there to lose? Well, you just don't know, do you?
Whose benefit do those entities stand/aim to serve?
When I'm out I always pay with cash and don't present any form of ID. It's not because I do anything tasteless or illegal (not even remotely dubious), it is just common sense.
By the way, I got like 10 E-mails recently from PayPal. They offer money in exchange for installing their "app" (which I cannot anyway; I have no device that does "apps"). What they mean to say is, install this thing that lets us spy on your location and more, 24/7. Is that worth 5 pounds? No. To them it's worth a lot more. By the way, PayPal as a company is collapsing after a negative report:
Society is getting to the point where opting out of most things isn't being "weird" but being ahead of the curve. Sooner or later, at least one can hope, more people will realise this. █