can be that easy? am I missing something?
I'm referring to the plethora of big/small tools and app we use every day.
(a bit like the 'old' trick to declare you are from France to speed up your iphone: btw is it real and still working?)
just declare you are from EU
You can always use European providers with your real data if needed. I generally learned to avoid US-centric companies if I can. While those huge ones that have large business in EU are usually fine (and here your trick may actually work).
Smaller companies or those focused on US usually didn't cared about my data at all and sold it to anyone that was around.
Examples:
Kickstarter - they passed my data with email to many companies. Those companies had zero respect to it and resold it further. Same goes to services around it - I get emails from backerkit ... 8 years after last using Kickstarter, asking me to buy crap they don't even ship to my country. You can unsubscribe all you want, this never works.
PayPal - it's been 5 years since I deleted my account with that weird procedure. I have no access to it and no ability to restore that but still get all communication, they claim I regularly accept new terms and so on. And as apparently I did delete the account but data is not gone... someone else is using his account with my email attached. So I can't fix that (can't reset his pass also) but still get his emails as well.
The last point is actually very popular: companies do not validate emails and numbers at all. I have a nice looking Gmail address and get SHITLOAD of other people's mail. Banks, Insurance, healthcare, Apple (I closed a few user accounts but you can open a ticket with support on a different email they also don't check), PayPal, Instagram, scam sex portals and many more.
I've managed to reset passwords in a lot of them and either close accounts or change email but the problem persists.
My point is: EU companies do dumb things as well but my overall experience is much better and they do try to comply with GDPR. Fines are absolutely brutal and based on global income of the whole group under same umbrella.
Fun fact: at work we started to ignore US IT companies as it takes several calls with multiple people and a few weeks to get the first quote - we don't have manpower to deal with that.