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Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
81–90 of 269 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be quite clever for an incredibly horrible website. The other day my SO, who is a Turkish citizen, was filling up her visa application and after half an hour of meticulous form filling the system just kick her out. I think the session times out or something. If you haven't created an account or you haven't write down the current application ID everything is lost. In the process she was also directed to a n…
The hard truth of it all is that both the US and (partially) the EU don’t want to make this easier because seeing as wanting “outside” people is now a political liability. You may want to adjust your expectations around that.
That doesn't explain the same poor operational quality before it became a liability
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turkish tourist are desired, Turks love spending money on restaurants and activities especially since the prices in Turkey have become more expensive than most of the EU. Greeks even introduced special non-Schengen on-arrival visa valid on the Greek islands especially for the Turks. Besides that, EU has "green passport" exception for the Turkish nationals, where they can travel visa-free on this kind of passport that…
You are looking at it from Turkish perspective unfortunately.
I am EU citizen, I happen to know the Turkish perspective only because spent some years in Turkey and in fact it is the Turkish perspective that that EU doesn't want them and intentionally makes things harder but the moment you look at what's actually going on you see that this is not the case, just a Turkish fantasy about the "evil West and snobby Europeans". Considering that last year 50K Turks applied for asylum in EU and another 100K overstayed their visa, IMHO EU can be considered pretty generous actually with only 15% rejection rate since Turkey is the 2nd country with most applications after China.
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/visa-applications-rea...
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be quite clever for an incredibly horrible website. The other day my SO, who is a Turkish citizen, was filling up her visa application and after half an hour of meticulous form filling the system just kick her out. I think the session times out or something. If you haven't created an account or you haven't write down the current application ID everything is lost. In the process she was also directed to a n…
You might be making the assumption that the US wants to make the process easier.
You use the same system for Business visas. Hard to imagine US wouldn’t want those as easy as possible.
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be making the assumption that the US wants to make the process easier.
You use the same system for Business visas. Hard to imagine US wouldn’t want those as easy as possible.
Hard to imagine that the US wouldn't be as paranoid, self-sabotaging, and bureaucratically inept as possible?
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#86Visa application is riddled with scams. From the simple website that charges you twice the price to websites that will tell you that you were rejected and then fake your documents to get in with your name. So they're probably trying to see that you're not one of those web servers, a proxy for them or detect some known C2 channels.
I'm not too familiar with network side stuff. What would a port scan be able to detect that would indicate that you're a scammer?
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#87this is awesome
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#88[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another data point - 5he Indian visa system is similar. The official website ending in .gov.in, which is hard to find, offers a visa for $10 and minimal hassle. The scam websites, with better SEO sell the same shit for $80. They’re just proxying your application to the real website and pocketing the difference. It would be good if the Indian government could block the scammers but I guess it’s a lower priority for th…
The scam websites are probably owned by someone who works in the Indian govt.
Almost certainly, entire industries have been given over to indian scammers and their government allies.
Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?
#90How and why do browsers allow this? Why wouldn't the browser ask for permission in the same way that it does for Microphone access?
It's insane to allow any random website to port scan my LAN. If this wasn't a "feature", I would have considered this a high severity vulnerability