
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
...just use a different website?
Everyone needs to fail the test over and over again until they fall back to their non-we want to fuck everyone over even more world.
to prove you're human, enter your credit card number
I got one of these. They had accessibility options so I just did the auditory one. It says a couple words, you write them out, and you're done. Like hell am I using a Phone for this shit.
I still won't order online from a store that won't show me shipping cost without a full address and phone number. I'll give them the zip code, that's all they need, that's all they get before I decide.
Nah. Block all fingerprinting. You don't need any of this crap.
FWIW I've found passing it through my local SearxNG usually gives me a clean path to the content. But it's seriously worrying that some of the blocked content is publically available science (e.g. PMC Bioinformatics). But that should not be necessary, at this point a search engine should be a public resource. Fuck Google.
aaaaaand tab closed.
This is the only way to stop it. We must refuse to use it. All they watch is the numbers.
I bought a thing from Walmart using pickup for the first time, because the thing was "low stock", and I didn't want to drive there if they didn't have it. I get the email that it's ready, and they want me to download their stupid app to confirm. Fuck that, I went to the store, knowing I had a backup option, and found the last one of the thing on the shelf and bought that instead. Although, apparently the sign at the parking spot has a phone number you can call to let them know you've arrived--no mention of that option in the email.
LOL, fuck off. How about instead I move on to somewhere less hostile toward the user instead?
Just another reason to not use Google.
We are making side loading harder because scammers are using "these" tactics to install malware on your devices.
It's totally fine when we use the same tactics to install malware on your device.
malware is bytecode Google didn't approve of. when google spies on you, that's just "legitimate interest"
I once saw fake captcha scam that reuired scaning QR code to infect device. It looks exactly like that.
I once made QR code stickers that placed people on a website warning them to stop trusting QR codes.
I spent a year traveling and everywhere I saw a QR code my sticker QR code went over it.
You target the right locations and spoof the website and you can get credit card, phone, email, address. Svan this QR code for 20% off blah blah blah.
Do use them.
Noticed parking meters here have prominent labels now stating they do not use QR codes. I'm sure that's just providing the spot to put the scam QR code, but it's better than nothing.
Verifying you have a phone doesn't verify that you're human.
Just like Recaptchas haven't been a challenge to bots for a long time. Still, we had to deal with this shit. Makes you wonder if it's just a stupid fucking pretext... 🤔
Isn't it training for AI and automated cars?
Used to be, yeah. But this part of computer vision has been a solved problem for a while now. Captchas still remained for the sole purpose of annoying the living fuck out of people like you and me. Well, until Google figured out Captchas could be weaponised for (gestures) whatever this is.
-
Hype up AI.
-
Everyone starts scraping the internet to obtain training data for their AI.
-
To block the scrapers, countless sites implement stricter bot detection tools.
-
The owners of the bot detection tools now effectively hold all of the internet by its throat, deciding who can access what and extorting more and more data from you to verify you're human.
Fucking genius.
- Crypto comes out of nowhere with a steel chair and now we have to pay websites for access.

On the bright side, this means they are really worried that privacy practices such as those popular among the Lemmy crowd can make their surveillance expensive or maybe even impractical at scale, rather than profitable. I'm never sure if it's working, with firmware and all. Almost a good sign? Am I deluded?
No malicious site would ever fake this kind of flow in order to get someone to scan a dangerous QR code. Nope, that would never happen.
Fuck absolutely everything about this.
That's it. JavaScript was a mistake. Time to go back to HTML only pages
obligatory NoScript advertisement
-
People without a mobile device are fucked out of being able to pass a captcha
-
As if this isn't a way for them to associate multiple sessions on multiple specific devices with one another, this is just another avenue for data collection, period. Hidden under the guise of "more secure."
It really should be illegal to build systems that require a user's access to any unrelated technology. You shouldn't be forced to have a phone to pay a parking fee or to get on the bus. You shouldn't need an app to charge your car. You shouldn't need to use proprietary software from one spesific company to pass a captcha on a random site.
Any website that chooses to use this service will simply not get my traffic. If enough people feel the same, those websites will lose clicks and eventually tell Google to pound sand.
Imagine the utter hubris on these fuckers to think that people will get a google device just to access a website.
Or to think that an average user sitting at home would run to another room to grab their phone so they can verify themselves on the desktop just to visit blackcougar.com
1 year later
Government website you have to use to pay your water bill: “Confirm you are a human…”
I either use my banking website or go into city hall clerks office to pay it in person. I've never once had to go to the actual government website. It's an option, but not mandatory.
