Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to complain about a damn company and their shitty data collection practices.
Data Mining Rejected
I had the wonderful pleasure recently of a website being upset I was using a VPN to block their bullshit.
I get really annoyed with companies who think that they can take all of the data in the world and sell it at our expense. I guess it's not surprising, because in all reality "data is the new oil" is definitely a term that I heard years ago that rings true every single day. James Corbett is who I heard it from, and I remember it very well.
I was using a site the other day for some stuff and I needed to log into it. When I tried to log in though, it gave me some bullshit error. I have run into this before, where the company is upset that I use a VPN that blocks their data harvesting capabilities and fiend-ish behavior so they block the connection. It's pretty fucking ridiculous if you ask me!
I had to turn off my VPN for a minute so that I could log into the fucker, because it was indeed something that I needed to log into as they sent me a message about something I was interested in figuring out. Once I got to the site though, I turned that fucking VPN back on real quick so that the damn pricks couldn't harvest me any longer.
This type of thing really annoys me, because it's certainly not a behavior done to protect anybody except the company. They make these things seem all glossy and cute by saying it's for our safety or some shit. They could give a fuck less about us, but want to maintain as much maximum profit as possible so they get mad at the users who are savvy and want to get their stuff in an increased protection state. Fuck 'em is what I say!
I thankfully got in and did what I needed to, but it really got me frustrated that these assholes wouldn't let me log into their site when I'm using a VPN. I could certainly understand if it was an added security step to do a captcha or something, but this was clearly because I was using a VPN that they were upset. That is completely Web 2.0 behavior; trying to maximize as much profit extraction from the user as possible.
I am hoping that we can shift away from this type of vulture behavior, but I suspect we are a long ways off from that. With the crazy shit going on in the world we are living in today, there is such a focus of profit over everything else which is really messed up at the end of the day. I think what's really challenging too is that so many people really aren't aware of this type of thing going on, and are okay with it. I think most of the people here on Hive are a different breed and would know better, but the average citizen of the world has absolutely no clue. That's not good!
Hopefully we can change that paradigm.. because it certainly needs to be changed!
What about you, do you notice these types of things that companies do in the name of maximizing profits? Let me know in the comments!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated
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That’s very annoying indeed.
Same for paywalls. Sometimes you can get around those through the reader mode.
Although I now use perplexity ai for everything I want to know. Often don’t have to open the links to the pages where it pulls the info from
Yeah I bet there are certainly AI things that can scan the information for us and give us the results. I'm not there yet; I could easily do it but I'm a little old fashioned like that hahaha. Paywalls are very annoying indeed!
I quite agree with you. And to prevent these abuses, we need to keep raising awareness among people. For example, in my family, especially my in-laws, the response is often, "I have nothing to hide."
It's not really about having nothing to hide. That's a bit simplistic nowadays, and as Edward Snowden once said, "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
Yeah the "I have nothing to hide" response is the worst! The reason we enjoy all kinds of great things in the world we live in is we had some privacy underlying it all. There is also another great quote, I forget who said it, though Benjamin Franklin is the one who comes to mind but I don't know if it's correct: "Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security." True words!
I really hate such practices to be honest. It's time to raise awareness about these and it's really not about not having to hide anything. It's because some of these places are predatory.At least where I am from, they sell our data and all we'll receive is spam calls.
Yeah I'm glad that there seems to be a higher percentage of people here on Hive who care about this type of thing compared to the physical world which is great, although not surprising. The Hive peeps are a different breed! haha.
My wife is confused when all she does is receive spam calls and letters in the mail for this bullshit or that. She is so willy-nilly with her information but is also stubborn and doesn't listen to me when I try to tell her the ways she is screwing herself lol.
The thing that I see most often is the VPN and location issue. Anything gps is pretty much useless. My Electronic logging will not operate with VPN.
But I am typing this to you on my 1+7 de-goolghouled & rooted with Murena OS phone. Still many apps do not work corrextly or at all with Big pHarma Billy Gates and goolGhouls Monopoly spyware / bloatware.
Yeah man my next phone is hopefully going to be a Graphene OS phone that fucks that horse shit. I’m pretty excited that you are as interested or more on this type of stuff than I am LOL you can teach me your ways sensei :D
Everyone should use a VPN, and ad blocker too, but we're told over and over "no".
!BBH
Yeah for sure! And there are plenty of people who simply don't know or don't care enough about this to understand how much of an issue it is.
Yeah this shit is so sneaky it's terrible. And you're right about people not realizing. I also have friends that just brush it off because they don't really understand what is happening and they think it's just part of the deal. So frustrating.
Yeah dude it's really crazy and annoying. My wife is one who couldn't care less about any of it and it's really frustrating and sad. The unfortunate part is it will be a concern when it brings up an issue instead of protecting oneself from the getgo.