I hope not very many of you are wondering WTF awkward interactions have to do with privacy, but hopefully the following examples make it clear to any of you who are wondering that.
Story 1
So, I go to sign up for a bank account at <insert big-ass household-name (in the U.S.) bank name here>. As soon as I walk in the door and tell the person I want to sign up for a checking account, they say “ok, let’s get you set up with the app.”
Now, I was running Lineage at the time with no Google apps. Just F-Droid and stuff I could install from there. I had yet to install any proprietary apps on my phone. (Not necessarily saying there was nothing proprietary running on my phone. I’d be surprised if Lineage doesn’t depend on some binary blob drivers and such for my particular phone. But still, my rule was “no proprietary apps.” And even if I decided to break that rule at the time, I kindof doubt the bank’s app wouldn’t just refuse to work without Google Play Services.)
My mistake was to say “it won’t work on my phone” rather than “I’m not interested in the app; can I still get a bank account here?” They pushed it hard. “It’s Android, right?” “…Technically, but not the way you’re-” “Ok, go to the Play Store.” “I don’t have the Play Store.” “Let me see your home screen.” (My second mistake was not ending that line of conversation there with a “no, just give me a bank account.”)
Before it was all said and done, I’d scanned their QR code and hit the “install” button so I could show them the error message that resulted. It wasn’t until then that they dropped it.
I honestly wonder if they didn’t get a commission when folks installed the app.
Lesson learned. Don’t say “my phone’s weird and it won’t work.” Say “I’m not installing the app. The only question that remains is whether that means I’m taking my business elsewhere or not.”
Story 2
Much more recent. Same phone, but by that point I’d switched to Ubuntu Touch. My phone just stops working as a phone abruptly. No calls or texts.
(The astute among you may already be thinking “oh, probably the carrier dropped 2G/3G support and now requires VoLTE.” And if you’re thinking that, congratulations you get 100 internet points, but don’t spoil it for the rest of the class.)
Now, I’ve always been really nervous about cell phones. About the time they started being ubiquitous (back in the days of Nokia candy-bar phones with black-and-white LCD displays), I had just quit Windows for OpenSuSE, and then not long after that, Gentoo. And when cell phones started becoming smart phones, stuck with the dumbest phones I could find in the used-phone bin at the phone repair place in the mall. In other words, I was (and largely still am) Amish for QWERTY.
So, I honestly don’t know shit about cellular communication technologies because I’ve never really used them. I’ve literally never had a data plan. I’m still grandfathered in on a no-data prepaid plan with my carrier that isn’t available any more.
Anyway, back to my current story where my phone wasn’t working. I had gotten a message a while previous that my SIM card (a physical SIM) would stop working at some point and I had to get a new SIM card. And my SIM card was super old. It was one I’d had to cut down to size and everything. I hadn’t followed through on the SIM card replacement, so I figured that was the issue.
I don’t have an online/web account with my carrier. And I still have never installed any proprietary apps on any phone, so I didn’t have my carrier’s official app. The chat and phone support wouldn’t help me because they couldn’t get proof that I was me. (They required text-message-code authentication, but my phone didn’t work, so I couldn’t receive the text.) They referred me to the T-Mobile store to get a new SIM card that would ostensibly work.
So, I suppressed my gag reflex and walked into the T-Mobile store. At the door, they asked me some basic questions and entered me into the queue. They told me it’d be 15 to 20 minutes of wait time.
I went and had a seat to wait. Well over an hour later, I finally asked someone for an updated wait time estimate. I’d apparently slipped through the cracks because as a prepaid customer, I appear on a different wait queue in their software than other customers. But at least prompting them got me attended to.
I told them the whole situation. I was glad they didn’t try to push me to get a new phone and plan. And they did give me a new SIM card. But when they found out I was running Ubuntu Touch, they referred to it as a “bootleg rom”, intimated that I might be doing something shady (because custom roms can supposedly “break the rules” and… I dunno get calls for free or some shit, I don’t know), and warned me strongly to be very careful with what data I store on the phone. (As if a stock-firmware phone is completely trustworthy. Heh.)
Not only that, but the new SIM card didn’t resolve the issue. Reverting to the stock firmware did. VoLTE is the only thing Ubuntu Touch doesn’t support on that phone. So now I either stick on the stock firmware until that red x turns into a green checkmark or try to figure out if Lineage supports VoLTE on the Pixel 3a as a stop gap until I can go back to Ubuntu Touch.
Anyway, those are my stories. I’d love to hear more such painful interactions with “normies” who don’t understand why you wouldn’t use Facebook or smart kitchen knives that won’t work without WIFI or what have you.
I use my wife a lot as my stopgap. She’s happy to have all the accounts, apps and stuff needed to do things and I tend to not interact with anyone unless I absolutely have to. I don’t mean that I don’t use these apps, I have a banking app, my medical app and stuff like that on my Pixel 9 running Graphene. I just usually am not the person in the house to have to deal with much of it.
The most awkward thing I ever have to do is to give companies my email address. I use a domain forwarder and everyone gets their own email address so I can blackhole it when they sell/give it away but that makes the conversation weird.
“Welcome to WeSellWidgets, can I have your email address for your account?”
“Sure, it’s WeSellWidgets@schw.im”
“No, I need YOUR email address.”
“That’s it. WeSellWidgets@schw.im”
“No, we’re WeSellWidgets.”
“Yes, but not @schw.im.”
“No, we’re WeSellWidgets.com”
“Yes, but my email address is WeSellWidgets@schw.im.”It’s a less playful version of “Who’s on first?” and can go on a really long time.
Some online sites won’t even allow you to use their name in your email address. When creating a Samsung account years ago, I ended up having to use “sssamsssung@” to get the account created.
Addy.io allows me to add a description for each alias so I can keep track of what each alias is for.
Haha I usually get “oh, do you work here?” And I say something along the lines of “no, that’s not how email addresses work” 😅
Not me, but a local news article about a cable tech using a woman’s phone to install an app and taking some personal files off of it.
I was shopping at a big box furniture store and as I was checking out they asked the usual “do you have a phone number with us?”. I replied “no”, to which they asked “are you sure?”, to which I replied “yes, I’m certain, I don’t do rewards programs”. They asked if I “didn’t just want to try a number to be sure”, so I said “okay”.
When the PIN pad prompted me, I entered my number as 000-000-0000. It locked up the whole POS (in both senses of that acronym) for a good 2-3 minutes before they finally pulled the plug. As it was starting back up, I said “we don’t have to check, it’s okay”.
Naturally, the cashier said “okay, let’s try again”. So their POS crashed. Again. And they had to open another register and move me and everyone else to it. I wasn’t really embarrassed though. I’d like to think they learned something, but I doubt it.
Once upon a time, my parents were switching ISPs and the sub-contractor doing the install demanded a cell number. We had been with this ISP before and they never needed a cell before and didn’t indicate the need for one when the appointment was made over the phone. I was the only person in the house with cell service at the time and wasn’t about to provide my number without a clear reason as to why.
I said to the technician “Not everyone has a cell, what do you do in those situation, you must have an another option?”
The technician when blue screen. With 80% of people in my province having a cell he likely hadn’t experienced pushback before.
Then I said “I just got home from work, what would you do if I wasn’t here to give you my cell number?”
Another blank stare.
Finally, he accepted my dad’s email address. Perhaps this was for a 2fa code, I never did ask why the cell number was required.
================
Another time a store checkout clerk asked for my postal code (a zip for the Americans). I said no. Usually this is the end of it but this guy “needed” the postal code and wouldn’t ring my items through. After me saying no, with increasing volume, about 4 times, he caved and totaled up the items. Most stores ask for a postal so they know what neighbourhoods to send paper flyer to but this store doesn’t have flyers so they really don’t need this information.
I share a similar name with my now dead father, may he rot in piss. The man used my email and address as well figured out my phone number that I got all his spam as well as mail garbage. It took years after his timely death for it all to stop.
Similar to your story 1: I needed to renew my mortgage and it was an instant thing if I did it via their app (for security reasons apparently), or it became a paper form and post thing.
I tried to do it via a web portal, but that didn’t work. I called them up to see how else I could complete the renewal, but that opened a can of worms of speaking to a woman on the phone, utterly unable to fathom why I couldn’t install their app on my Android phone: GrapheneOS (play store installed, but it denies their app on my dangerous ‘rooted’ phone).
The woman I was speaking to thought I was an idiot who didn’t know how to use Android. FFS.
Last week I got told off at the post office. Apparently I must use my real name when online shopping and stop addressing packages to Bilbo Bargains.
Now what I would really like is to be able to give a proxy address to online stores and have the post office forward items for those fake addresses to my real one.
I used this service a while back where you could order Amazon items through a proxy with XMR and they would deliver it to a nearby Amazon mailbox. Unfortunately they had cameras at those mailboxes which meant they got my face and my plates. I mean theoretically I could wear a mask and ride my bike but I guess I felt like that was too far…
Boycotting Amazon is that sweet middle ground you’re looking for.
Well how else do you buy it privately?
Search for Amazon alternatives. People have compiled nice lists. Look for a local company to fulfill the need; it’s better for shipping too. You’ll likely notice that the stuff you buy, if even slightly more expensive, will be of much better quality. Use Amazon search to get ideas or compare stuff if you want and then buy local, secondhand or simply direct from the manufacturer.
There are countless alternatives, but all equally shitty. Its just you have to be a multi-billion dollar company for such a product.
If the item is available locally I pretty much always do it that way, but its often not. Especially niche items.
Buying direct is just much more risky, as there’s no sort of intermediary if there’s a problem. Amazon has always been a “no questions asked” return experience.
I’m having a pretty rough time at the moment, especially health wise. I want to keep family updated and actually just generally talk to them. They use FB Messenger and there’s no way I’m using that. So I put one message in the FB group chat asking them to contact me on Signal (it’s free, private, safe, yadayada) and that I’d set up the same group chat there so all they had to do was install and accept the invite.
Not a single family member did.
They are all average smart phone
addictsusers so the usual bajillion apps and one more isn’t going to make any difference to them. But they care so little for privacy and my well being they couldn’t be arsed even doing something as easy as installing Signal 😔Postmarket OS says the Pixel 3a has experimental support for VoLTE. Might get you back online without going back to stock
Ooo! A gentleman and a scholar. Thanks kind sir! I’ll have to look more deeply into what “partial” means on the “features” section, but that’s extremely promising.
I actually have another funny story about the stock firmware I’m running now. I got a notification that said “need time to focus? Use Focus to pause distracting apps. Tap to set up.” My phone gave me a notification to ask me if I was getting too many annoying notifications. 😐 So I’m definitely interested in getting off of the stock firmware hopefully quickly.
