When I got my Logitech mouse, after the driver got installed, the first thing it introduced me with is to synchronise the setting by setting up an account.
Years down the line, I got a Razer mouse and it needs another account of the same kind.

In Indian services and storefronts, mostly they get satisfied with just your number. Some of them spam your SIM messages with offers, notifications, etc while others spam the WhatsApp (if it exists). The issue where it can cause an issue is: numbers often get transferred from people to people, officially or unofficially, so you can fall in a legal trouble if the previous owner was involved in an illegitimate activity; although I am not aware if it ever happened on a large scale.

Although not a large user of it: login with Google/some other platform could be a better option?

Grzyb wrote on 2024-11-25, 07:27:

Oh yeah, I've recently been to some food store - and at the cash register got asked "Do you have the app?"
It turned out that prices vary depending if you've got the app...

if you get slightly lower prices you pay in "data" instead. Actually 'big' data, ie finding price optimization opportunities at an individual level is happening to some extent now, enable by vast data collection and mining, with AI doing some of the work. Almost all these "sign up" products are trying to get data about you in order to get more money later

The overall 'goal' is to try and get you to spend exactly the highest amount you would be willing to spend while the person next to you might spend more or less

in the present this has been around as "surge pricing" or dynamic pricing for quite a while, e.g. meals, travel, hotels at peak times being higher priced than equivalents at non peak times and its becoming more nuanced - we already see that different people can pay different prices for exactly the same hotel or journey depending on apparently external factors like who you book through and whether certain mystery discount codes are applied.

how about if you buy a new TV though, and you would pay $500 but the person next to you would only pay $400 and the company would allow both.

naturally you'd be upset - but what if the price difference wasn't that much, say $50, and it was all muddled up in apparently unconnected vouchers, codes, discounts, etc all of which seem at first glance to be unconnected and you may shrug and buy at $500 while the guy next to you, equally unsure about why, buys at $450. Welcome to the future of AI/big data driven maximal price extraction, all "hidden" by nonsense gimmick discount variances to keep you in the dark while it actually just calculates what you might be willing to pay and then pushes you to it.

A future in which no one will ever feel they got a bargain again, because every price will be maxed out to your personal probable limit, every purchase will be close to the point where you wouldn't buy it

gerry wrote on 2024-11-25, 13:41:

in the present this has been around as "surge pricing" or dynamic pricing for quite a while

And that's why we avoid posting links to Ebay auctions 🤣

A lot of this isn't new. Razer did this as far back as 2017 and probably a few years before that. But it wouldn't put me off a Razer Naga, I love that mouse.

ratfink wrote on 2024-12-08, 17:39:

A lot of this isn't new. Razer did this as far back as 2017 and probably a few years before that. But it wouldn't put me off a Razer Naga, I love that mouse.

As long as all features of a given device are available without any online account - and even in a totally offline setup - there's indeed no reason to avoid that device.

Grzyb wrote on 2024-12-08, 21:41:

ratfink wrote on 2024-12-08, 17:39:

A lot of this isn't new. Razer did this as far back as 2017 and probably a few years before that. But it wouldn't put me off a Razer Naga, I love that mouse.

As long as all features of a given device are available without any online account - and even in a totally offline setup - there's indeed no reason to avoid that device.

There's always someone with, "I have paid 120 USD, will I be missing something out?"

I agree this is completely out of hand
And I am becoming increasingly resistant to it
See this - this is CASH. You don't need ANY information about me. You don't need my phone number. You don't need my email. You don't need my street address.
Every "account" that you have is another way you information can be stolen

Purchased something yesterday, got my item and a receipt and then asked me for my phone number, I just told them a bunch of random numbers.
Lets face it, sales assistant is just doing a job. They don't really care either way and can do without the hassle of someone complaining especially this time of year.

The most frustrating thing about the retail email receipt thing is that credit cards have, for many years, been capable of storing an email address for exactly this purpose. You probably have one that already does this.

Ideally the cashier would never have to ask you to spell it out, and the retailer would never have access to that address themselves. You could just get your receipts automatically emailed to you directly at point of sale, just through using contactless payment. It's possible other countries have managed to make this happen already, and you may have experienced this with a smaller/indy shop.

The reason this hasn't taken off where I live is that they know how much their customers would fuss about it "having my data" or generally make a mess of a process designed to make everything simpler.

So we're stuck with a halfway-solution that is the worst of all worlds. Huzzah.

Two things I have noticed fairly recently:
You used to be able to use Amazon just to read reviews on things; now after just a few you are asked to sign in
This is brand-new recent - you can no longer browse photos on flickr without being asked to create an account

It's all a part of pointy headed bosses wondering how they will squeeze 'just a few cents more', or 'ensure customers get on a recurring payment system'.

Personal information gathering is a thing that's like that. They gather your data, then sell or lease it out, and turn your identity into a recurring payment of just a few cents. But thats a few cents extra, that can keep being tallied.

Pointy headed bosses love that.

It needs to be illegal.

Sadly, outside of Europe, pointy headed bosses are golfing buddies with corrupt legislators, so that never happens.

How would they bond over talking about how they put their daughters through college!? /s

Anyway, I am fast becomming a walking contradiction, through being a luddite-tech head.

Very tech savvy, to be *able* to sidestep or circumvent these needless, hamfisted data grabs, and completely unnecessary user accounts, so as to actively sabotage this dangerous new technology.

The irony is not lost on me.

wierd_w wrote on 2025-04-30, 15:54:

It's all a part of pointy headed bosses wondering how they will squeeze 'just a few cents more', or 'ensure customers get on a r […]
Show full quote

It's all a part of pointy headed bosses wondering how they will squeeze 'just a few cents more', or 'ensure customers get on a recurring payment system'.

Personal information gathering is a thing that's like that. They gather your data, then sell or lease it out, and turn your identity into a recurring payment of just a few cents. But thats a few cents extra, that can keep being tallied.

Pointy headed bosses love that.

It needs to be illegal.

It needs to be not done by people - don't sign up, don't create an account, don't pay a subscription. It's very easy and whatever you think you are "losing" out on it really isn't much. Yet people just do, so they are deciding aren't they.... it's sad.

Legislating on the collection of types of personal data, on the way that data is treated and sold etc, now that i can agree on!

Having read a bit here .. this isn't going to stop until governments step in and force the Corpos to back the hell off from data collection and paywalling essential features behind prohibitive subscriptions.

But all of this would require governments to grow a set and stop sucking Corpo dick for kickbacks, but I guess they will do something small to show they are actually doing something and to placate the noisy minority. The people in the know will see it for what it really is and quickly move to other applications not doing pay walling and accounts for everything or applications and devs not interested in hoovering up mass user data, but essentially nothing of any real substance will get done by the governments.

I will note that some governments are trying to push for heavier legislation but I suspect they are fighting a losing battle, the Corporations and multi national Conglomerates have far too much power now and I doubt they will stop even if new laws are bought in. What's a 20 million dollar fine to a Corp thats turning over a several hundred billion USD a year ? ..its nothing that's what it is, they get sued ..oh noes what ever shall they do with all this cash and the power to make noisy problems disappear. User data and money is so lucrative that they can afford to write the fines off and still come out with eye watering profit margins.

Meanwhile the braindead masses will keep on giving their data and money to the Corpos for features they don't need and will never use because its convenient. That sexy new phone comes with street cred and clout, hey look at my new shiny thing over here on TikTok, Youtube and Instagram. Hey while you are here why don't you give me a like a Sub and don't forget to hit that bell and leave a comment . .it really helps me out.

Yeah this isnt going to get any better, social media has made people stupid.

I was thinking about this. Back in the day, way even before the internet, radio shack used to be like this. They would want you to have an "account" with them.
One time I was like see this, this is CASH. You don't need ANY information about me, not my address. not my phone number, NOTHING.
Another time I have them a fake name and address 🤣

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-05-01, 08:04:

Meanwhile the braindead masses will keep on giving their data and money to the Corpos for features they don't need and will never use because its convenient. That sexy new phone comes with street cred and clout, hey look at my new shiny thing over here on TikTok, Youtube and Instagram. Hey while you are here why don't you give me a like a Sub and don't forget to hit that bell and leave a comment . .it really helps me out.

Yeah this isnt going to get any better, social media has made people stupid.

I (partly) don't blame the masses - most people just grow up, learn their culture and environment and respond accordingly and that has worked great for millions of years, its embedded behaviour.

In the same way an average person isn't going to beat a chess grand master who spent decades learning about chess, an average person has little hope against huge teams of talented, knowledgeable, scientific, data led psychologists, sociologists, marketing specialists who spend hours a day studying biology, culture, human behaviours, neuroscience and vast amounts of data, focussing year in year out on how to get that average person to succumb to temptation, how to bypass conscious rational thought, be made more readily manipulated, elicit fear, pride, longing and whatever - all in order to buy more crap (or vote or whatever). The efforts are enormous and they have been for ages and are now ramped up like never before

And where we (some of us) imagine ourselves immune to this we need to consider if that's true, or maybe its just resistant to certain types of manipulation, or only in certain spheres of life

Do you have a phone number with us? Would you like to set one up? Would you like to sign up for our credit card? Would you like to round up to donate to our fake charity? Would you like to

No, I would like to purchase this item and leave.

Every interaction with a corporate entity is like this. Something happens when an organization grows large and must become a machine to survive. It's kind of fascinating.

I have this problem when I go shopping I know where everything I need is and have an efficient route to collect it all and every year they change the layout of the aisles drives me nuts cuz it takes months to find everything again or remove their best selling products that have been stocked on the shelf for years.
The check out is the same 9 out 10 times I use the normal check outs even if they are busy cuz I can’t be assed arguing with a machine that still needs a checkout person to sort out only for 2 seconds later for it to fuk up again.