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Little League wants all your information

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Re: Little League wants all your information

#31

Post by 1123581321 »

kstrauser wrote: post #27
Spooky23 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like any serious hobby, people are people and do stupid shit. You know how nerds kill each other about systemd, vi vs emacs, C vs Rust? Crazy parents will pull together a group of 11 year olds from 30 miles away to beat your 8/9 year old to get into a tournament.

I've been involved in various baseball and softball leagues in two different states, and I 100% vouch for every word of the above. Anyone who's been involved with little kid sports knows this is utterly plausible and not even slightly exaggerated.

Growing up, we even saw some of this behavior in park district youth softball, which had no tournaments, tiers or scouts and even had a mission statement of not being a competitive environment.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#32

Post by avmich »

quotha wrote: post #3
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

I hear ya- we just had to go through this whole process and thought it absolutely ridiculous, but didn’t feel had much choice since we’d like our kids to be able to play.

The problem with web forms is that they don't allow to discuss ambiguities - like, what if a parent can't for some reason provide required information.

So it's plausible that if such a form doesn't contain "other" option, then any data submitted should be as good as any other.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#33

Post by Guest42 »

kstrauser wrote: post #18
bruceb wrote: post #14

People complain about data harvesting (and I don't want mine harvested either) but would would also balk at paying the "true" cost of some things if the data being sold subsidy was removed. Shorter: You get what you pay for.

Your contention is that Little League would be more expensive if they weren't allowed to sell your financial records?

I think this position is being applied somewhat universally with no supporting data.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#34

Post by pridkett »

krumpet wrote: post #26
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

Pretty strict background check? Just so your kid can play Little League? Please help me understand why. If the parent were signing up to coach, I could understand. But just to have a kid in the league. I don't get it.

It’s referring to strict background checks for the volunteers.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#35

Post by hammock »

throwawaygulf wrote: post #4

I'm just starting to forge documents for this garbage. School records? Easy, download them, change my address to one a few miles away in the same city, change a few numbers of my SSN, etc. Same goes for utility bills, financial records, etc. Fuck the data miners. The isn't even criminal to do because I'm not defrauding anyone. The address is still one in my city. They never do any actual verification so it always wor…

An alternative is to redact any unnecessary information. More people should know/do this. Proof of residency should only require state or zip code. Send in a DL with everything but your name and state blacked out. If they push back, then they will be forced to justify why they need the other info. Remember they rely on your league fees to exist.

Much better to push back directly than to cry foul/play a victim/complain. Sovereign individual and all that. Yet I see a lot of the latter on this forum.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#36

Post by jancsika »

Spooky23 wrote: post #13
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

> Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe, which is why birth certificates are required — parents are insane and go to extreme lengths (I personally encountered forged documents, parents who delayed entry into kindergarten to age 6, bogus documents from siblings or cousins, etc) to try to let older kids play in younger levels.

This being HN, I figure I can make this criticism and be understood even if it breaks the rules here:

Either Little League operates on a human web of trust-- where parents show the documents to a human like you, who then signs-off on the age/residency verification, on up the chain as the Linux Kernel devs work; or, Little League requires a sophisticated digital system for accepting and verifying the documents with lots of personally identifying information in them. If it's the latter, fine-- but then that system is subject to the same scrutiny that Signal, Clubhouse, Experion, and every other digital system out there.

With that in mind, Little League's privacy policy as written is a dangerous pile of horseshit, and your rank speculation that they're probably not leveraging it the way the rest of data miners would isn't helping.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#37

Post by kstrauser »

hammock wrote: post #35
throwawaygulf wrote: post #4

I'm just starting to forge documents for this garbage. School records? Easy, download them, change my address to one a few miles away in the same city, change a few numbers of my SSN, etc. Same goes for utility bills, financial records, etc. Fuck the data miners. The isn't even criminal to do because I'm not defrauding anyone. The address is still one in my city. They never do any actual verification so it always wor…

An alternative is to redact any unnecessary information. More people should know/do this. Proof of residency should only require state or zip code. Send in a DL with everything but your name and state blacked out. If they push back, then they will be forced to justify why they need the other info. Remember they rely on your league fees to exist. Much better to push back directly than to cry foul/play a victim/complai…

I think it's at least as useful to cry foul so that more people learn about it than to expect everyone to start appropriately redacting their information. You and I might do that, but a huge number of people wouldn't bother.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#39

Post by felipellrocha »

throwawaygulf wrote: post #4

I'm just starting to forge documents for this garbage. School records? Easy, download them, change my address to one a few miles away in the same city, change a few numbers of my SSN, etc. Same goes for utility bills, financial records, etc. Fuck the data miners. The isn't even criminal to do because I'm not defrauding anyone. The address is still one in my city. They never do any actual verification so it always wor…

This sounds like a good problem to solve. Give me your address, and if someone asks, and you are ok with, i can verify you live in said (country/county/city) but not tell the exact location.

Obviously, there is a problem of trust in the first place to solve, but i fee like this sort of data escrow could be useful to a lot of people.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#40

Post by fouric »

hirundo wrote: post #5
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

I'd be OK with this if "trusted sponsor" meant Bob's Plumbing, and Bob's the second baseman's father who bought the team's uniforms. Sure, let Bob have my email so he can pitch me a tankless water heater. But it's as likely that they're remote conglomerates selling horrible products that damage our kids' health and shorten their lives, like Coca-Cola. And we're handing them a sheaf of vectors to insert their promotio…

I'm not even OK with this. I have very little trust in the average small business' ability to protect my information, on a technical level. I have more trust in their desire to protect my information - but that's not sufficient by itself.
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