31–40 of 217 posts
TV companies, please don't show me advertisements instead of the TV show I want to watch.
Car dealers, please tell me about all the expensive feeds and add-ons before I agree to buy the car.
Phone companies, gyms, fucking everyone, please tell me about the $50, $150 "sign up fee" in addition to the $X a month cost.
etc.
I mean, good luck guy. You are a human on a planet run by humans with all the power imbalances that implies.
My 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.
Including your email address. And then you abandon the cart, because it doesn't make sense for you to pay $50 for shipping. But then you get those emails 'you forgot something'. No I didn't.
Fastmail offers this feature, and I think 1password might. The `+` tag should be possible with any provider, `me+hn@example.com`
Of course now you have to have a way to keep track of what email you gave to what company. I usually do `firstname_company/website@` to make it easier to remember.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Including your email address. And then you abandon the cart, because it doesn't make sense for you to pay $50 for shipping. But then you get those emails 'you forgot something'. No I didn't.
Solution to this is to use a masked email or at the very least add a `+` tag so you can block it easily or know who's the source of the junk mail. Fastmail offers this feature, and I think 1password might. The `+` tag should be possible with any provider, `me+hn@example.com` Of course now you have to have a way to keep track of what email you gave to what company. I usually do `firstname_company/website@` to make it…
Edit: Hit me with the downvotes, I don't mind, but I also enjoy hearing about why my perspective might be wrong. From where I sit, I can imagine that plenty of people annoyed by these kinds of email harvesting patterns also don't know enough to employ the kind of method described here. I feel like that's a solution, but not one that can be prescribed to the average joe.
I 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Including your email address. And then you abandon the cart, because it doesn't make sense for you to pay $50 for shipping. But then you get those emails 'you forgot something'. No I didn't.
Solution to this is to use a masked email or at the very least add a `+` tag so you can block it easily or know who's the source of the junk mail. Fastmail offers this feature, and I think 1password might. The `+` tag should be possible with any provider, `me+hn@example.com` Of course now you have to have a way to keep track of what email you gave to what company. I usually do `firstname_company/website@` to make it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Including your email address. And then you abandon the cart, because it doesn't make sense for you to pay $50 for shipping. But then you get those emails 'you forgot something'. No I didn't.
And you're forever on their "mailing list" because they don't process unsubscribes, since they probably just manually upload a .csv of everyone every time they want to send something to you, whether you ever opted in, or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Including your email address. And then you abandon the cart, because it doesn't make sense for you to pay $50 for shipping. But then you get those emails 'you forgot something'. No I didn't.
And you're forever on their "mailing list" because they don't process unsubscribes, since they probably just manually upload a .csv of everyone every time they want to send something to you, whether you ever opted in, or not.
This one is paid, but I’m at the point where $140 for 3 years “standard” package is fine by me. Not to mention I can actually call someone if I have a problem, instead of getting blocked by google for no particular reason without any recourse. I don’t have a huge social media following that can get me special treatment.
There may possibly be free options that allow you to proxy/mask emails, but I’ve not explored that.
Another useful service is privacy.com, which in a similar manner let’s me create proxy virtual payment cards, setting limits and redacting cards. This kills the possibility of a malicious business like a telecom still charging me for something and having the bank still allow it to go through when they shouldn’t. Now my credit union is pretty good so far, but there are a lot of banks that will happily fuck someone over without a care.
It’s nice having no mean _No_