The Internet is turning into a really weird place. Let's see:
- Gmail spam filtering fails a lot. A ton of legitimate messages end up in the spam folder. And actual spam and phishing messages make it to the inbox. (PSA: Please check your spam folder regularly and empty it so you can spot those legitimate messages easily.)
- For a ton of websites, the contact box and/or email address doesn't work. This means there's no way to even tell the vendor or site owner that their site is broken, unless they have provided a phone number and one is willing to go through the inconvenience of calling them.
- With several vendors, I get weird messages that make no sense. From time to time, I get emails from vendors that I do business with addressing me with an incorrect name (e.g. I got one today addressing me a John) and asking me to review product that that claim I bought even though I didn't buy or even browse it.
- I have gotten happy birthday greetings from my doctor's office at some completely random date.
- The entire web and YouTube is packed to the gills with clickbait. You could spend hours wading through trash to find something useful.
- If an article is dated, chances are it's full of broken links and missing images.
- I regularly get password reset messages or "one time login" links which I didn't request. (OK this is probably someone trying to hack my account.) Right now I've gotten a bunch of these from LinkedIn.
- Even reputable brands have bad UI elements and it appears to be getting worse. Not sure if that's what they are teaching in web design school or if the folks building sites these days have no idea what a good UI is. For example, if you're shopping on a website, if you have 5 styles in 10 colors, you will see 50 items randomly placed. If you're browsing on a mobile device you'll be scrolling through all 50 to discover that there are only 5 styles. (North Face is one, but there are tons of such vendors.)
- It seems like every few weeks now we have a data breach. Most recently got a letter from an insurance company saying SSN, DoB, and insurance information were compromised. With that info, someone can literally start making claims against my insurance.
- "Something went wrong, please try again later" seems to be happening more and more often.
I'm probably missing a ton of things. The big guys are so focused on surveillance because it's so profitable that they have forgotten about everything else including ease of use and security. I think we are walking into a disaster. It's only a matter of time before we have something big go wrong and it won't be because "there was nothing we could have done about it".
- Gmail spam filtering fails a lot. A ton of legitimate messages end up in the spam folder. And actual spam and phishing messages make it to the inbox. (PSA: Please check your spam folder regularly and empty it so you can spot those legitimate messages easily.)
- For a ton of websites, the contact box and/or email address doesn't work. This means there's no way to even tell the vendor or site owner that their site is broken, unless they have provided a phone number and one is willing to go through the inconvenience of calling them.
- With several vendors, I get weird messages that make no sense. From time to time, I get emails from vendors that I do business with addressing me with an incorrect name (e.g. I got one today addressing me a John) and asking me to review product that that claim I bought even though I didn't buy or even browse it.
- I have gotten happy birthday greetings from my doctor's office at some completely random date.
- The entire web and YouTube is packed to the gills with clickbait. You could spend hours wading through trash to find something useful.
- If an article is dated, chances are it's full of broken links and missing images.
- I regularly get password reset messages or "one time login" links which I didn't request. (OK this is probably someone trying to hack my account.) Right now I've gotten a bunch of these from LinkedIn.
- Even reputable brands have bad UI elements and it appears to be getting worse. Not sure if that's what they are teaching in web design school or if the folks building sites these days have no idea what a good UI is. For example, if you're shopping on a website, if you have 5 styles in 10 colors, you will see 50 items randomly placed. If you're browsing on a mobile device you'll be scrolling through all 50 to discover that there are only 5 styles. (North Face is one, but there are tons of such vendors.)
- It seems like every few weeks now we have a data breach. Most recently got a letter from an insurance company saying SSN, DoB, and insurance information were compromised. With that info, someone can literally start making claims against my insurance.
- "Something went wrong, please try again later" seems to be happening more and more often.
I'm probably missing a ton of things. The big guys are so focused on surveillance because it's so profitable that they have forgotten about everything else including ease of use and security. I think we are walking into a disaster. It's only a matter of time before we have something big go wrong and it won't be because "there was nothing we could have done about it".
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