the broken Internet -- a rant

[anoop]

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".

 

[silverlifter]

Most of the people I know that work in the industry consider the web a hostile environment. There are some internet protocols that are still relatively sane; if you remember gopher then you could always check out Gemini.

I agree though. Basically it is a combination of the Tragedy of the Commons and surveillance capitalism resulting in a toxic dumpster fire... It's why we can't have nice things.

 

[Lightcs1776]

You can reduce some, though not all, of the ad junk by using a Raspberry Pi and running Pi-hole on it. It blocks a lot of advertisement sites at the network level so they don't reach your PC or laptop. A current Raspberry Pi will cost less than $70 for a version 4, which is what I run Pi-hole on. The latest version is v5, significantly faster but overkill for this particular application, and starts at $75 with 4 Mb of RAM, and gets more expensive as the RAM goes up. I also picked up a case and SSD card with it. I get logs from Pi-hole that shows what is blocked and it is thousands of sites a day.

Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking

pi-hole.net

 

[SmokedStanley]

I feel you on most of your observations but hasn't it always been like this.

 

[ctr]

Nothing related to technology. The root cause is the decline of western civilization. Low or no standards. No accountability across all walks of life. But hey, everyone is a winner so they have that going for them.

Don't bother complaining to the site. Some IT jerk will sign up your email to a nasty spam list.

 

[luvmysuper]

Nothing related to technology. The root cause is the decline of western civilization. Low or no standards. No accountability across all walks of life. But hey, everyone is a winner so they have that going for them.

Don't bother complaining to the site. Some IT jerk will sign up your email to a nasty spam list.

I mentioned something similar in another thread somewhere in that I noted that Online News outlets were rife with grammar and spelling errors. Not small time operations, but major News Outlets.
It's as if the writers were posting a tweet or a text message.
Add to that the fact that every other online "story" is a sponsored click bait link.

 

[njpaddy]

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.)

I tried, and hated, Gmail before switching to GMX over 10 years ago. I found GMX the closest to Eudora, an email client I paid for back in the 1990s & 2000s. I finally convinced my wife to switch to GMX, when Gmail locked her out of her account when we were on vacation one year. She never found out why or was able to recover those emails. As she's the bill-payer, that was a problem. Neither of us has had a problem using GMX. It must have a good spam filter, because we rarely get any.

 

[anoop]

I tried, and hated, Gmail before switching to GMX over 10 years ago. I found GMX the closest to Eudora, an email client I paid for back in the 1990s & 2000s. I finally convinced my wife to switch to GMX, when Gmail locked her out of her account when we were on vacation one year. She never found out why or was able to recover those emails. As she's the bill-payer, that was a problem. Neither of us has had a problem using GMX. It must have a good spam filter, because we rarely get any.

First time I'm hearing of GMX. I've heard of other services like Fastmail and Protonmail. I've now heard of several stories of folks getting locked out of gmail completely and since they don't have any customer service, it becomes impossible to undo that unlock. So that is getting scary. I should probably download my email and make backups regularly.

 

[garyg]

I hate it, but can't do squat other than a reply that gets me more spam .. good that I'm getting to that age, sorry for my granddaughter who inherits a country of clicks. Too bad you can't buy a Carcano anymore for $12.88 eh?

 

[Mempho]

Oh brave new world.

Also, +1 on GMX.

 

[StillShaving]

- If an article is dated, chances are it's full of broken links and missing images.

And its corollary:
-If a Product Review article was updated recently, chances are it is full of old warmed-over information and outdated products.

 

[njpaddy]

...I've heard of other services like Fastmail and Protonmail.

I use a Protonmail address for posting snarky comments on news sites, but I never log into it to see if it gets mail. I once used an aol email to create a fake Facebook account, so I could see pics a cousin posted. It took years after aol's demise for Facebook to delete that mudetod (weary death) account.

 

[luvmysuper]

I use a Protonmail address for posting snarky comments on news sites, but I never log into it to see if it gets mail. I once used an aol email to create a fake Facebook account, so I could see pics a cousin posted. It took years after aol's demise for Facebook to delete that mudetod (weary death) account.

I still have an aol email address.
Use it every day.

 

[Bsamps]

I can hear my mother’s voice… “if you don’t like what’s on, then turn it off!”

 

[Juanmosey]

Do you regularly clean the garbage from you computer? I'm using DuckDuckGo for a browser. I have some problems but no where near the amount you do.

 

[c__port]

I hesitate to mention this because of the potential revenue impact, but ublock origin. In-browser, easy on-off, fine-grain dynamic filtering.

Pi-hole DNS can be configured on routers for a simple implementation. Somewhat less desirable to me because it's either on or off at the router level. More desirable to many because it can't be bypassed without router access.

A combination of these with a bit of hands-on customizing, and you'll never see 99% of the malicious stuff, unless you intentionally allow it.