26: unsubscribe from the email promos that the site automatically signed you up to even though you didn’t check the Subscribe to newsletter box, which requires you to log into the site and find and uncheck all the boxes in the “contact settings”.
26a: Note that they will simply add more categories over time and helpfully subscribe you to each of the new ones whether you ever visit the site again or not.
Missed the step towards the end were you have to switch browser and restart the whole process because “Firefox not supported” or you’ve an extension that’s a bit overzealous on blocking the checkout popup window.
Or the page which doesn’t allow an ad blocker
#2/9/14
you forgot that you need to select more options, scroll down, read every box carefully to make sure on doesnt mean off and off doesnt mean on, make sure you dont hit the button that ignores your choices and turns everything on anyways…
i fucking hate what this has turned into.
I just ublock every cookie screen and navigate in incognito mode so cookies publicity cooki s will have zero chances of actually getting read.
Not as it really matters. As most of my advertisement profile doesn’t come from some random site cookies but from phone espionage.
Don’t forget that it saved all of your credit card info except for the secret code. then you search for the card and find the stupid code and enter it and then it tells you that there was an unknown error and to try a new card.
They forgot the last step: delete the promo emails from the company you never signed up for
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
If you give some information to any for profit company you can be sure they will use that information and if you decline the permits they are going to keep asking until you eventually miss click.
For example if you fill shopping basked, but abandon it after filling your information they can contact you once as “a friendly reminder” about the cart and they can keep that information legally for few weeks until they must anomize the data. And if you at some point clicked something where you accept the marketing permits they can keep that information “as long as the company thinks it is reasonable to keep and/or revelant information for their operation.”
Source: Im part of the problem. Atleast for now.
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
Note: there are a lot of services now that will sneakily get your signature/acceptance without you realizing it. The latest one I noticed was at the pharmacy, where you normally sign for your prescription, it now has one or more options that pop up before you sign for your actual medicine, and if you read what you’re signing you see it’s permission to text you special offers and promotions.
ALWAYS READ WHAT YOU ACCEPT, IF YOU DON’T KNOW, DON’T SIGN IT. If you’re worried or pressured, just ask someone. We can’t keep discarding our rights and privacy because we’re worried about people in line behind us or worried how much time you’re going to lose at least SKIMMING the user licence agreement. You can save yourself a lot of junk and hassle if you at least make sure the accept buttons and signature fields are actually for what you want.
I am glad I am using proton. I never give my real email to any website and create an alias for every website. That way, when I ever receive a spam email, I know exactly which company sold my data and I can turn that alias off permanently.
do you use “email+alias@proton” style aliases (afaik how gmail does it) or do you get an entirely new email address?
I use proton pass and it generates an alias with a prefix you give it, which helps to recognize what email it is, so this format: <prefix>.<random-generated-part>@passmail.net
So an example could be google.chasing645@passmail.net
How people can deal with internet without adblockers like uBlock is just baffling. Not only ads, but also all the cookie banners and phone app popups and other crap. uBlock will filter all this shit out so you just use the website without junk and annoyances.
I’ve used the original Windscribe back when it was still a regular x86 app that acted like a local proxy and would filter out ads and banners. That was early 2000s iirc. Even back then I couldn’t stand all this crap. Today I can’t imagine browsing without uBlock or at minimum with DNS filtering which can’t apply cosmetic filters or more advanced rules.
AdNauseam. It clicks all the adverts. Yes, this is actively malicious behaviour. No, I don’t care.
DNS level ad blocks have been a huge game changer for me. When I play games at home, no ads. Then when I go out and play those games, I forget that they have ads.
For me setting up Android phone without it. Installed some app and got bombarded by all the ads and shit. Something I just don’t even know on mine.
using open source android apps (as much as possible) and having a custom rom is a magical experience
Windscribe was important because every bit of bandwidth saved mattered. Less so with 2.5gb fiber connections to home.
I actually didn’t care so much about bandwidth back then even though 56K modem was ass. It was the ad banners that drew me nuts. Especially since that was the era of flashing and blinking GIF and Adobe Flash banners. I got 1Mbit ADSL a bit later and that’s when it was even less important since bandwidth was unlimited. Banners were still there tho and were just as annoying.
We have driver’s licence as an app in norway. I was on my way into a pub where I was asked by a bouncer to show ID. I forgot my physical wallet with physical ID, so the dance started:
- Unlock phone.
- Find app.
- App requires national login. Enter personal number (Norwegian SSN)
- National login has 2FA via another app. Open that to confirm.
- National login requires password. My password is in a password manager, so I open that.
- Password manager requires password.
- and 2FA.
- Acquire password and scramble back to the app that required password for national log on.
- Complete login so I can show that I am 33 years old, which is over the required age of 18.
In reality, the bouncer just gave up on me at around step 5 and let me in.
There are just things that should be physical things.
IDs and fucking buttons in cars please. Holy fuck please can we not do the IPAD thing in cars. Please God.
And on cooking stuff!
Long click to select stove element
Phew now it’s on full power…
I have yet to encounter an electric stove that doesn’t loop to full power when you press “-” when it’s at its lowest setting
Mine doesn’t. But it will go straight to full power with ‘power on’ then ‘+’ (rather than ‘power on’ then ‘-’). A single ‘power on’ press doesn’t actually turn the burner on, which I always thought was weird. But the alternative of having to go through power levels sounds worse, so I guess I get it
Yesterday, I was on the train and the lady checking the tickets at first walked past me without checking mine. After more people had gotten on, she made her route back down the train, when she asked me, if she had checked mine – hmm, she must’ve checked mine – so, she was already about to walk on and out of reflex, I said that she had actually skipped me before.
Felt a bit silly to then get out my ticket and show it to her, since I clearly wouldn’t have told her to ckeck me, if I didn’t have a valid ticket. Kind of same energy as with your bouncer, like you wouldn’t have all this stuff on your phone and spend the time trying to get into it, if it won’t lead to anything.
Cookie dismisser extension, bitwarden for passwords and 2FA codes, uBlock origin for annoying popups that can’t be removed with DNS blocker directly.
There are ways to reduce the pain somewhat, but they shouldn’t be necessary in first place.
(Well, hoomans and passwords are an issue that can’t be solved easily, but the push for passkeys has been a nice nudge in a more secure and more usable alternative.)
You don’t need an extra extension for the cookie notices. Just use uBlock Original for that:
Under Filter lists enable “Cookie notices”Does it just disable them or does it click on decline first?
It varies: Mostly it just removes the html of the banner from website. For some more annoying websites for example YouTube it clicks decline.
I like to tell people that using uBlock origin means the computer doesn’t have to render images and text in adds, so it is actually more environmentally friendly to have it installed than running the browser raw.
It’s a thin argument, but I’m happy to see that some people have jumped on because of it.
Consent-o-matic is a life-saver
what the fuck do you mean hoomans
Caught my eye too and it feels eerily reminiscent of the alt-right “coomer” and “consoom” kind of vocabulary, although I stress the word “feel”
It might be a reference to the Ferengi, from Star Trek. They say “human” in a weird way to demonstrate their mild contempt.
pooper
What browser are you using? Chrome pushed it’s new extension requirements and killed ublock. Firefox just dropped a bomb about selling personal info I think.
Firefox, naturally. The personal info stuff is still unfolding and being clarified. Will switch to Librefox or Waterfox if stuff gets bad.
Missing step of CAPTCHA asking you to click on motorcycle images, only for you to fail at least twice
Me just trying to fucking pay a utility bill:
“Honey, could you come in here and tell me if this looks like the edge of crosswalk just visible behind that car? I have one chance left and can’t mess this up!”
Lifehack: Use the audio prompt and just put in ANY similar number of random words you hear. It fuzzes AI training data at same time. Works every time.
- cloudflare decides it doesnt like your user agent or IP or any of a myriad of other factors and denies you access completely, order has been cancelled
Don’t worry. Soon you’ll be able to subscribe to a service where an AI will just order products you don’t actually want for you.
Removed by mod
I remember back in the day we had a popup blocker. Now we are bombarded by popups, but inside the website instead of new windows. The most annoying part is the times delay on them. When the page is loaded, you want to click on a link, but a fraction of a second before you click a promotion pops up and you click on that. Or the Google ads when searching. Click result… Oh no, the ads loaded in, I clicked on an ad instead. Fuck you.
The amount of effort you need to put in to get the info you want. So annoying! They try so hard to keep you on their website as well. When I want to know a shortcut in excel:
- search for the shortcut
- missclick an ad
- try again
- find page with info
- close cookies
- close promotion
- need to login for info, go back to Google and try again
- close cookies
- close promotion
- start reading…
- info about what excel is used for
- history of excel
- story about the many shortcuts excel has
- close popup for newsletter
- story about different key on keaybord for windows and Apple
- story about why you would need this action you’re searching for
- buildup to explanation what the actual shortcut is
- close promotion
- close another newsletter pupup
- finally the shortcut you’re searching for. FFS
I think most of this could be avoided if you used ublock origin
PSA. It’s disabled on Chrome now. Switch to Firefox (still looking for a better alternative myself with recent FF news though.)
It’s something I’ve been putting off. But chrome is unusable now. So many ads. I’m sure there is a workaround but just like leaving reddit it’s a good time for me to find a chrome alternative.
I have a Pi Hole, Proton vpn with ad blocking and Vivaldi browser with ad blocking built in, but that’s not enough apparently
I work in web dev and it kills me every time to set up this stupid UX.
Honestly, this biggest problem is these damn pop ups actually work for conversions. If people would stop filling the pop up forms on the sites they would fade to obscurity but for every annoyed dev who closes the pop up asking for an email, there is 10 normies who give up their email or create an account or complete a purchase.
Static email sign up forms in the header or footer of a site are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate in 2024 was 11%.. The highest preforming pop ups in this analysis had a 43% conversion rate, that is INSANE for web conversions. And those stupid gamification spin the wheel pop ups that I personally hate the most, have a 13% conversion.
Alternative to 7 they have this stupid magic email login where you cannot set a password but have to go to your mails everyone you need to login
I had one the other day, choose to login with password or the magic email link. I know my password, let me in fucker. Oh no, you still have to go to your email and click on some link to verify it’s really you.
20b : shipping is abusively eating up the low price
20C. Realize this is not the best price on the product. 20D1.
For i in range (your_breaking_point): if i == your_breaking_point: break Return to step 1.
20D2. Get an email saying “You forgot something in your cart”
I am compelled to optimize this code:
pass
While it sucks, I think that’s better actually. Let me cook lol
Websites that ship for free have to factor in the shipping into the item price.
Which means that if you order a lot of items at once rather than separately, you get no reward for being more sustainable.
Shipping costs ensure that people don’t make inefficient, single-item orders unless they really need to.
The shitty idea is that you have to make an account and lots of jazz before they tell how much shipping is.
Also, instead of 25€ for the product and 8€ for shipping, surprise!! the 18€ product magically needs a special courier for 15€ to ship it.
After registering, verifying your email, and logging in, they say they don’t ship to your country.