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I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

neilzone.co.uk

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Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#541

Post by mixmastamyk »

cluckindan wrote: post #483
mixmastamyk wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but the big companies have ratcheting expectations to meet, and prefer to keep benefits to themselves, while leaving us with the drawbacks. e.g. Tesla using telemetry to protect itself but not customers without court order.

You seem to carry a very defeatist demeanor. Is there a particular reason for capitulating at every point of friction?

You've misread or I was not clear enough. I advocate rejecting this system—one must understand the boundaries in order to do that. Saying, "I won't bother" is the opposite of that.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#543

Post by fsflover »

SoftTalker wrote: post #481
fsflover wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about cookies but also about fingerprinting, which is extremely hard to prevent.

No extensions that randomly change your fingerprint? I suppose that might trigger a lot of captchas.

Fingerprinting can be extremely sophisticated. Have a look at this test: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Only Tor Browser can reliably fight with it.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#544

Post by II2II »

cortesoft wrote: post #163
bArray wrote: post #6

I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback. I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entire…

I am in my mid forties, been working as a professional software developer for over 20 years. I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. What “dark pattern cookie trick” are you worried about? I just can’t come up with a scenario where it will actually harm me in any way. All the examples I have heard are either completely implausible…

> I just have not yet been convinced I should actually care.

I'm not out to convince you since my reasons are unlikely to apply to you. There are some of us who want privacy for privacy's sake. We respect the social boundaries of other people, and find those who don't respect our social boundaries creepy. We don't much care one way or the other if those people are out to exploit us or to harm us. It is the act itself that we consider violating.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#545

Post by jen20 »

bpt3 wrote: post #478
Izkata wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not rare at all. It really just sounds like you haven't had reason to pay attention to this before and now don't want to accept it's become a thing. A google search for "cops called on kids playing alone" results in a never-ending series of stories like this. I think most of them are from people with your perspective being caught by surprise.

I have kids, and I know hundreds of parents across large portions of the country. None of them have these issues. A person driving down a private road and threatening to call CPS because they can't see the parent is not rare? And the parent poster didn't just say someone threatened to call the cops, they said that they would be jailed in two very specific circumstances where jailing him would have led to very negativ…

> Many people are stupid, and do stupid things like calling the cops for no valid reason at all. Those people are annoying and can be ignored,

Either you are disingenuous or incredibly sheltered. It's hard to tell which, but I suspect I know.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#546

Post by pibaker »

autoexec wrote: post #246
Forgeties79 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely safer browsing the internet now than it was when I was a kid. Getting a virus or equivalent on your phone is no small feat

It happens all the time, and its as easy as sending a phone a text, or a packet, or escaping a sandbox, but you'll rarely be aware of it when you're infected because unlike the old days where malware would fill your screen with ads or something today they just silently collect your data or use your internet connection for careful port scans or DDoS attacks. NSO Group spyware (or similar) could be on your phone right…

No nation state actor is going to waste a 0day on a random nobody. Even the recent Notepad++ exploit was only used against specific political targets. Any actor smart enough to be able to have an arsenal of 0days at their disposal is also smart enough to use them only where they are worthwhile because they will only get to do it once.

Believing you are more under threat from sophisticated government hackers rather than unsecured IOT devices, unvetted npm packages or hijacked download links is just LARPing for people who want to sound more important than they actually are IMO.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#547

Post by bluGill »

jodrellblank wrote: post #301
bluGill wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the bikes who fought for pavement everywhere. Cars took it all over. Mud is annoying to walk it, but otherwise humans handle bare dirt just fine.

The Romans built roads across Europe instead of mud paths two thousand years before bikes were invented. Humans might be able to cross dry compacted dirt, but do much better on engineered roads than on deep, wet, sticky, slippy mud, even before thinking about carts and wagons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads_in_Britannia Unless you mean something else, but Paris was paving roads in the 1750s, a lifetime bef…

Those road function more like hiways. I'm not arguing paved roads are not or didn't exist. I'm saying that many smaller roads would not have been paved.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#548

Post by aaronmdjones »

michaelt wrote: post #27

> I was pondering last night for which services I, personally, would actually be willing to verify my age or identity. > And… the answer is “none”. > At least, none that I can think of at the moment. Think back to the recent pandemic. Work? Online. School? Online. Recreational activities? Online. Talking to loved ones you don’t live with? Online. Birthday party? Online. Nonfood shopping? Online. Banking? Paying taxes…

> Work? Online.

Presumably my place of employment would have already verified my identity when I started working for them.

> School? Online.

Ditto, and for kids enrolling during lockdown they wouldn't have any ID to hand over anyway.

> Recreational activities? Online.

> Talking to loved ones you don’t live with? Online.

> Birthday party? Online.

> Nonfood shopping? Online.

Doesn't need me to verify my identity.

> Banking?

Every bank I've ever interacted with has done this verification in-person.

> Paying taxes

The government already knows who I am and what I look like (by issuing the ID to me); this is fine.

> and bills?

Direct debit just has a sort code, account number, and name on the account. No verification of identity.

> Job interview?

I wouldn't think that a new employer would be verifying your identity until you actually get the job offer?

> Doctors appointment?

Doesn't need me to verify my identity to arrange it. I have to go there in person anyway, I can damn well show them my ID then.

> Dating? You guessed it, online.

Eh. This one is a grey area. I can see the desire to have members verify who they are. I've also seen how badly that can go wrong.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#549

Post by ranger_danger »

fsflover wrote: post #543
SoftTalker wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No extensions that randomly change your fingerprint? I suppose that might trigger a lot of captchas.

Fingerprinting can be extremely sophisticated. Have a look at this test: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ Only Tor Browser can reliably fight with it.

Tor Browser will not even hide the OS you're using from javascript... so if you're on Linux, you are automatically more identifiable than >97% of people.

Also, that EFF site only checks against other people who visited the same site, so the results are skewed IMO. The other comment that links to creepjs is what I consider the best available open source tool.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#550

Post by rmonvfer »

bArray wrote: post #6

I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback. I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entire…

I’m 26, probably terminally online and a professional software engineer too and I just accept cookies every single time because it’s the lowest friction path to just get the banner out of the way. Too bad for those sites tho, because I use uBlock origin on the browser, whitelist cookies by site (all cookies are otherwise always blocked everywhere) and use an always-on VPN to route all my network traffic to my PiHole DNS server.

Maybe it’s a little bit overkill but I set it all up once and only have to whitelist sites every once in a while so it’s not really an annoyance. Besides, I’m not 100% sure now but I’d say that just using uBlock is enough (if properly configured) to prevent cookie-based tracking so my setup is definitely over-engineered.

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