Functional and hypothetical only example usage of a curated digital footprint, for story purposes:

You keep, use, maintain, and preferably daily drive technology interfacing gizmos in a manner that results in a footprint where the conclusions drawn from it resolve to a "curated" set of... whatever the beholder is looking to ID from the footprint.

Functional example:

You keep and use devices in a manner that is at most "normie+".

You own a Pixel Phone but keep stock android on it and add just enough to it not make you hate your life. You use a couple of normal sub services.

You still show some of your silly, like use an account on a porn website that federates with the world you care to socialize with. You still post how The Man better watch out.

Same as everyone else. The fingerprint looks like what you want it to look like.

So that it remains separate from what could happen/be happening elsewhere inside a Faraday cage with other devices there. How they are configured like, or who they talk to, the networks you utilize and the level of silly you display in your other accounts that have never so much as shared a trace route in passing together.

That's hypothetically separate from the curated digital identity, depending on how careful and good at it your set up was.

So when the friendly folks with the mass surveillance pull up your file, it's composed of what you wanted there to begin with.

It's just another implementation layer of minimizing and compartmentalization, really.

Hypothetically. For a friend.

Having no footprint is as obvious as having a unique one. It's easier to hide in the crowd.