Just saying, some of these sites don't have captcha or any kind of spam prevention implemented. Something something simple shell script feed them garbage data something.
Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
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Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#22I understand the point; ideally you want to have some free content before you actually need to sign up. However, when integrating a paid solution like OpenAI for example, the tricky part is to limit the number of free requests to prevent going bankrupt by one user. I can imagine that this would be a potential reason to ask for a sign up.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#23Just saying, some of these sites don't have captcha or any kind of spam prevention implemented. Something something simple shell script feed them garbage data something.
How would this work?
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#24I wish there were a way for users to share the websites that do this and other dark patterns so that I can avoid them. Effectively a reputation system. Search engines used to do this, but apparently not any more. We need a replacement.
I agree, we need a replacement. At the protocol level I would like life insurance policy returns and banking service as a place to store my money that allows me to pay any portion of currency I want at any time. So Facebook can be paid for the time I'm on the site, for instance. The returns from the insurance contract might even make it all free to me (it would, easily). Everyone is happy except those who rely on reaching you via forced advertisements. Oh, and the people who rely on enslaving others.
Any such protocol would be labeled as evil, filthy socialism.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#25Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I have no choice, I use a free throwaway email service. Unfortunately it's much harder to get a throwaway phone number so it greatly annoys me when services (Twitter, specifically) require one
All of big tech is checking phone numbers against sophisticated databases to determine if it is possible for an individual to have that number associated with their cell phone device. If it isn't a real mobile number you are not getting in.
Where do these databases even get their data? IIRC the phone network is very opaque compared to IP addresses and internet routing.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#27My biggest current peeve is not allowing me to see shipping costs until I’ve given basically all my information to a company before I’ve checked out.
This actually worked out to my advantage! I did this on a site, found out that they didn't ship to Canada so I abandoned the cart. I got all the oh no emails so I emailed them back telling them I CAN'T buy their stuff because you WON'T ship to me.
Couple of days later the company CEO emails me back. First he apologises (bonus points to a Canadian), promises to fix the cart abandon logic, and offers to ship me 2 of the things I was going to buy for free.
They will hopefully arrive this week
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#28Just saying, some of these sites don't have captcha or any kind of spam prevention implemented. Something something simple shell script feed them garbage data something.
It's unlikely that they are actually storing anything until you sign up. And even if they did it would take a lot of effort to feed them garbage from tons of different ip addresses.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#29Adobe's web-based JPG to PNG converter is exactly like this. Upload a JPG, hit convert - it uploads the file, processes it on their end, and then refuses to give you the result until you "sign up for a free adobe account that we conveniently didn't tell you about until now!" Similar enough - some shopping websites will grab your email address when you start doing a guest checkout but eventually decide not to purchase…
If you use a web service to convert from jpg to png you've already lost.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grab a copy of netpbm or GraphicsMagick that's compiled for Windows. Or, grab a free image editor ( https://www.getpaint.net/ is popular for Windows), open in one format, save in the other.
This. I honestly don't understand why people use online image converters when there are high-quality OSS programs that will do the job locally. I'll bet that the majority of the online converters are using these programs to do the actual conversion anyway.
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