Other articles in this NYT series describe how location data is used for similar types of inference. Many of these systems are nearly impossible to opt out of, since they rely on deep rooted tech, like cell carrier chipsets, credit purchase history (tied to retail addresses), or even psychographic & demographic profiles tied to people in your neighborhood (essentially block level aggregates of commute & purchase data). Your strategy of spending time generating fake data online is not enough to really opt out of these systems, and many would argue that the burden of generating consistent dummy personas is already immense. To really opt out of your data being sold or used to target you, you would need to be ready to not travel with a cell phone, not use any electronic payments like credit/debit cards, or even conceal your place of residence from public sources through complex legal obfuscation. Obviously there are different levels of obscurity that can be had, but much of this technology uses dragnets with few practical ways to entirely hide.
