Live data from Hacker News

HTTPS on NYTimes.com

open.blogs.nytimes.com

91–100 of 167 posts

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#91
They were hacked in 1998 by "H4ck1ng F0r G1rl13z", by Adrian Lamo in 2012, by the Syrian Electronic Army in 2013, and claimed Russia attempted to hack them 5 months ago (and in the same breath said they have no evidence of this). Glad their security team is on the ball with this new-fangled encryption thingy.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#92
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what companies fail to consider when they deploy these "retention strategies." Every roadblock you put between me and cancelling is ALSO a roadblock between me and resubscription in the future. I've subscribed and cancelled Hulu+ three or four times when there was a lull in the content. But I'd have no hesitation in signing up again because I remember how hassle free it was to cancel. Contrast that against Log…

Same for me and WoW - I'll start up every expansion, play a couple months, and unsubscribe no sweat. I do it again and again because I know I'm not really "committing" to 15 bucks a month, because it'll be easy to cancel.

In the case of WoW, those temporary re-subscriptions for 2-6 months upon release of new expansions is the business model that sustains the game. If Blizzard didn't allow pausing and resuming billing at any time, the game would have died off many years ago.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#93

The thing the NYT needs to fix (as of earlier last year) is the fact that you can't cancel your subscription without calling them (which is not the case for signing up). I spent 20 minutes[1] on the phone telling them that yes, I really did want to cancel. It was a worse experience than dealing with Comcast, not least because I felt bad for the poor woman who obviously had some financial incentive to get me to stay o…

For future reference, I just tell people I understand that they are supposed to go through a script but I consider the subscription cancelled because that's what I've requested.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#94
post #88

The thing the NYT needs to fix (as of earlier last year) is the fact that you can't cancel your subscription without calling them (which is not the case for signing up). I spent 20 minutes[1] on the phone telling them that yes, I really did want to cancel. It was a worse experience than dealing with Comcast, not least because I felt bad for the poor woman who obviously had some financial incentive to get me to stay o…

For all newspaper subscriptions (and all other semi-shady companies), I use Privacy.com. It allows you to create silo-ed credit card numbers and specify how much each card is allowed to charge you per week/month/overall. When I want to cancel a newspaper subscription and it's impossibly difficult, I just email them telling them I'd like to cancel the subscription delete the associated credit card. Not my problem anym…

What if they affect your credit record?

May be different in the US, but if you did that in the UK and they didn't read your email or whatever, you're likely have them sell the debt to a collection agency which will then place a marker on your credit record.

It's then a huge pain in the ass undoing the credit record mark. I still have a default on my record thanks to the cable company here not cancelling our service properly. They even sent an courier to pick the equipment up but despite a trillion emails explaining this they insist they can't do anything about it because they have sold it to a collections agency. What a load of gibberish.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#95
post #28

They mention it has been a complex undertaking and not complete yet - does anyone know why they can't just sit a traffic manager in front of everything with SSL offloading? Also does anyone know what the new personalisation features are that they mention being able to offer now HTTPS in place?

At any large media organization, there are tremendous amounts of content no longer connected to any CMS that may have hard-coded insecure links/resources in them. Some of them may live on obscure servers or domains. Or the developers/journalists who worked on them and have knowledge of their construction are long gone. These pages are very laborious to find and update.

If you don't mind 404ing or breaking a ton of your old content, it's probably not too difficult. But if you're the newspaper of record, it's a big deal that URLs live on and continue to work as expected.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#97

The thing the NYT needs to fix (as of earlier last year) is the fact that you can't cancel your subscription without calling them (which is not the case for signing up). I spent 20 minutes[1] on the phone telling them that yes, I really did want to cancel. It was a worse experience than dealing with Comcast, not least because I felt bad for the poor woman who obviously had some financial incentive to get me to stay o…

They won't fix it because it's by design. It's a common anti pattern - make sign up easy and cancellation hard.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#98
post #69
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Echoes of Comcast ... the NYT is constantly promoting 50% off the posted rates for new subscribers, without ever offering such terms to existing customers. But if you're a "frustrated" long-time customer who's on the verge of canceling, then suddenly the 50% discount is rolled out. In most other industries, loyal customers get better treatment. Or it's the same deal for everyone. These sorts of inverted pricing struc…

Insurance is another industry with the same inverted pricing structure.

Which is why I shop around every 1-2 years. I have saved thousands.

Re: HTTPS on NYTimes.com

#100

No need, who would like to read the Lügenpresse securely anyway. People must be really uninformed to even pay for their own propaganda and then get a Comcast like experience like described below when wanting to cancel. And of course a comodo cert, the worst incompetent thing you can get. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDmj_xe7EIQ . I would prefer Letsencrypt over anything and not at all because its free.

We don't need neo-nazis on HN:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21710866-1848-1939-hist...

Post reply on HN