Your first error was going to a website

26: unsubscribe from the email promos that the site automatically signed you up to even though you didn't check the Subscribe to newsletter box, which requires you to log into the site and find and uncheck all the boxes in the "contact settings".

26a: Note that they will simply add more categories over time and helpfully subscribe you to each of the new ones whether you ever visit the site again or not.
Unsubscribe? You mean report spam
- Unsubscribe is for real suckers only. When someone clicks that I always imagine some goon elbowing the guy next to him and saying something like, "look Keith we got another" unsubscriber" over here! With a big goofy grin on his face.
- Report spam? You mean deactivate single-use email.

Missed the step towards the end were you have to switch browser and restart the whole process because "Firefox not supported" or you've an extension that's a bit overzealous on blocking the checkout popup window.

Blocked an ad that fucked up the css so dramatically that the checkout button is now permanently stuck at -10% of viewport.
- I tried to order chicken teriyaki so it would be ready for my wife to pick up en route home. Website requires a login. Make it. It doesn't log in after creating the login, so log in again. Password wrong. Reset password. Finally get in. Get to last step and there's no button to send the order. Fortunately, I'd wasted so much time that my wife was already there standing in line.
  
  I assume it's just formatted for mobile, but when I'm sitting at my computer, I'm going to use it, it's always faster. Except when it doesn't work.
Or the page which doesn't allow an ad blocker

Don’t forget that it saved all of your credit card info except for the secret code. then you search for the card and find the stupid code and enter it and then it tells you that there was an unknown error and to try a new card.

How people can deal with internet without adblockers like uBlock is just baffling. Not only ads, but also all the cookie banners and phone app popups and other crap. uBlock will filter all this shit out so you just use the website without junk and annoyances.

I've used the original Windscribe back when it was still a regular x86 app that acted like a local proxy and would filter out ads and banners. That was early 2000s iirc. Even back then I couldn't stand all this crap. Today I can't imagine browsing without uBlock or at minimum with DNS filtering which can't apply cosmetic filters or more advanced rules.

AdNauseam. It clicks all the adverts. Yes, this is actively malicious behaviour. No, I don't care.
- Malicious against advertisers, beneficial to the site you're visiting.
  That's a win-win in the desolate place we call the internet today.
Just want to post this here for anyone not aware... uBlock "medium" mode. Kind of an unadvertised feature that has to be enabled in a strangely obscure way (I think they want to make sure you're not a complete idiot).

Still, pretty easy to set up, and much more protection than the default (but also not nearly as frustrating as "hard" mode or whatever they call it). Basically, most sites you visit are going to be broken the first time you go, but you enable elements you need for the site to load, then save those settings for that domain. Takes about 30 seconds or so once you know what you're doing and you only need to do it once per domain. Basically, I keep 1st and 3rd-party scripts off completely most of the time. It's relatively rare that I absolutely need to enable 1st party scripts on a page for it to load.

It's kind of like uBlock + noscript learning mode. The element zapper is clutch as well, but that's not unique to medium mode or anything.
DNS level ad blocks have been a huge game changer for me. When I play games at home, no ads. Then when I go out and play those games, I forget that they have ads.
- For me setting up Android phone without it. Installed some app and got bombarded by all the ads and shit. Something I just don't even know on mine.
Windscribe was important because every bit of bandwidth saved mattered. Less so with 2.5gb fiber connections to home.
- I actually didn't care so much about bandwidth back then even though 56K modem was ass. It was the ad banners that drew me nuts. Especially since that was the era of flashing and blinking GIF and Adobe Flash banners. I got 1Mbit ADSL a bit later and that's when it was even less important since bandwidth was unlimited. Banners were still there tho and were just as annoying.

#2/9/14

you forgot that you need to select more options, scroll down, read every box carefully to make sure on doesnt mean off and off doesnt mean on, make sure you dont hit the button that ignores your choices and turns everything on anyways......

i fucking hate what this has turned into.

I just ublock every cookie screen and navigate in incognito mode so cookies publicity cooki s will have zero chances of actually getting read.

Not as it really matters. As most of my advertisement profile doesn't come from some random site cookies but from phone espionage.

We have driver's licence as an app in norway. I was on my way into a pub where I was asked by a bouncer to show ID. I forgot my physical wallet with physical ID, so the dance started:

Unlock phone.
Find app.
App requires national login. Enter personal number (Norwegian SSN)
National login has 2FA via another app. Open that to confirm.
National login requires password. My password is in a password manager, so I open that.
Password manager requires password.
and 2FA.
Acquire password and scramble back to the app that required password for national log on.
Complete login so I can show that I am 33 years old, which is over the required age of 18.

In reality, the bouncer just gave up on me at around step 5 and let me in.

There are just things that should be physical things.

IDs and fucking buttons in cars please. Holy fuck please can we not do the IPAD thing in cars. Please God.
- And on cooking stuff!
  
  Long click to select stove element
  
  Phew now it's on full power...
- It is an physic thing, OP just forgot it at home.
Yesterday, I was on the train and the lady checking the tickets at first walked past me without checking mine. After more people had gotten on, she made her route back down the train, when she asked me, if she had checked mine – hmm, she must've checked mine – so, she was already about to walk on and out of reflex, I said that she had actually skipped me before.

Felt a bit silly to then get out my ticket and show it to her, since I clearly wouldn't have told her to ckeck me, if I didn't have a valid ticket. Kind of same energy as with your bouncer, like you wouldn't have all this stuff on your phone and spend the time trying to get into it, if it won't lead to anything.
Either he was being a dick (fairly likely all bounces are) or you have a really good moisturizing regimen because there's no way that a 33-year-old would look like they're under 18.
- I definitely do not look like an 18-year old. But I was entering with a group consisting of a variety of looks, so it was just a thing to check everyone.
That sounds like a 60 second thing at most. None of it is worse than having to drive back home for your wallet.
- In Norway, it has been a long tradition to do as many drinks as possible at home before heading to the bars, due to steep prices in bars. So I was pretty "beautiful" at that point, which does not help with running passwords and 2FAs

They forgot the last step: delete the promo emails from the company you never signed up for

The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.

If you give some information to any for profit company you can be sure they will use that information and if you decline the permits they are going to keep asking until you eventually miss click.

For example if you fill shopping basked, but abandon it after filling your information they can contact you once as "a friendly reminder" about the cart and they can keep that information legally for few weeks until they must anomize the data. And if you at some point clicked something where you accept the marketing permits they can keep that information "as long as the company thinks it is reasonable to keep and/or revelant information for their operation."

Source: Im part of the problem. Atleast for now.
- I am glad I am using proton. I never give my real email to any website and create an alias for every website. That way, when I ever receive a spam email, I know exactly which company sold my data and I can turn that alias off permanently.

Cookie dismisser extension, bitwarden for passwords and 2FA codes, uBlock origin for annoying popups that can't be removed with DNS blocker directly.

There are ways to reduce the pain somewhat, but they shouldn't be necessary in first place.

(Well, hoomans and passwords are an issue that can't be solved easily, but the push for passkeys has been a nice nudge in a more secure and more usable alternative.)

You don’t need an extra extension for the cookie notices. Just use uBlock Original for that:
Under Filter lists enable "Cookie notices"
- Does it just disable them or does it click on decline first?
I like to tell people that using uBlock origin means the computer doesn't have to render images and text in adds, so it is actually more environmentally friendly to have it installed than running the browser raw.

It's a thin argument, but I'm happy to see that some people have jumped on because of it.
Consent-o-matic is a life-saver
What browser are you using? Chrome pushed it's new extension requirements and killed ublock. Firefox just dropped a bomb about selling personal info I think.
- Firefox, naturally. The personal info stuff is still unfolding and being clarified. Will switch to Librefox or Waterfox if stuff gets bad.
what the fuck do you mean hoomans
- It means you're an uncultured swine it's never seen an episode of Star Trek.
- Caught my eye too and it feels eerily reminiscent of the alt-right “coomer” and “consoom” kind of vocabulary, although I stress the word “feel”

"tHiS wEbSiTe Is BeTtEr In ThE aPp!"

Bold of you to assume people know the difference between an app and a website.
- The App:
  
  One WebBrowser component.
  
  A straw to slurp all your location and contact data.
  
  Annoying notifications.

Don't worry. Soon you'll be able to subscribe to a service where an AI will just order products you don't actually want for you.

well, a large language model.

Alternative to 7 they have this stupid magic email login where you cannot set a password but have to go to your mails everyone you need to login

I had one the other day, choose to login with password or the magic email link. I know my password, let me in fucker. Oh no, you still have to go to your email and click on some link to verify it’s really you.

Step 4 is a bit optimistic. Usually when I search something there are 30 products of what I specifically don't want before finding the single listing of what I do want.

Recent example. Needed a 8v 1A transformer
Searched AC to AC 8v 1A
Every listing on the first 3 pages were universal AC to DC adaptors that didn't have an 8v setting. the dials all went 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12.

also, all the search functions are deliberately broken so they can feed you algo slop instead of letting you find the product you want.
- Yes, e commerce sites which want revenue, developed a search that worked and then broke it to give you less relevant results, hoping you will go to the competition.
  
  It is well known that companies have revenue. Line must not go up!
You may have already figured this out, but a variac would fit the bill.

20b : shipping is abusively eating up the low price

20C. Realize this is not the best price on the product. 20D1.

For i in range (your_breaking_point): if i == your_breaking_point: break Return to step 1.
- 20D2. Get an email saying “You forgot something in your cart”
- I am compelled to optimize this code:
  
  pass
While it sucks, I think that's better actually. Let me cook lol

Websites that ship for free have to factor in the shipping into the item price.

Which means that if you order a lot of items at once rather than separately, you get no reward for being more sustainable.

Shipping costs ensure that people don't make inefficient, single-item orders unless they really need to.
- The shitty idea is that you have to make an account and lots of jazz before they tell how much shipping is.
  
  Also, instead of 25€ for the product and 8€ for shipping, surprise!! the 18€ product magically needs a special courier for 15€ to ship it.
- waits to order stuff until there's a few things needed
  
  free shipping not available anyways unless you hit minimum order of 50.-
  
  proceed to order 10 things at once
  
  each thing gets shipped in a separate package, on separate dates…
  
  even the 20x 1cm M3 screws that you originally needed come in a cardboard parcel, by themselves
  
  packages keep arriving randomly at your place for the next 5-10 days, leaving you with a pile of cardboard

Sure, at step 17 you are certain it's showing ngwt14 but it fails then takes you to an almost twenty year old "identify the motorcycles" with 8 pictures of a partial wheel... or is it a bicycle? And do they mean plural as in for the whole thing or in each image?

The latest one is where they show you a picture of it deformed owl and ask you to find all other deformed owls. It's great because humans are really good identifying pictures of distorted animals, it's definitely something we evolve to do.

I remember back in the day we had a popup blocker. Now we are bombarded by popups, but inside the website instead of new windows. The most annoying part is the times delay on them. When the page is loaded, you want to click on a link, but a fraction of a second before you click a promotion pops up and you click on that. Or the Google ads when searching. Click result.... Oh no, the ads loaded in, I clicked on an ad instead. Fuck you.

The amount of effort you need to put in to get the info you want. So annoying! They try so hard to keep you on their website as well. When I want to know a shortcut in excel:

search for the shortcut
missclick an ad
try again
find page with info
close cookies
close promotion
need to login for info, go back to Google and try again
close cookies
close promotion
start reading...
info about what excel is used for
history of excel
story about the many shortcuts excel has
close popup for newsletter
story about different key on keaybord for windows and Apple
story about why you would need this action you're searching for
buildup to explanation what the actual shortcut is
close promotion
close another newsletter pupup
finally the shortcut you're searching for. FFS

I think most of this could be avoided if you used ublock origin
- PSA. It's disabled on Chrome now. Switch to Firefox (still looking for a better alternative myself with recent FF news though.)
  
  It's something I've been putting off. But chrome is unusable now. So many ads. I'm sure there is a workaround but just like leaving reddit it's a good time for me to find a chrome alternative.
- I have a Pi Hole, Proton vpn with ad blocking and Vivaldi browser with ad blocking built in, but that's not enough apparently
I remember back in the day we had a popup blocker

Wait what happened to pop up blockers in your mind?
- Those were for new windows popping up. Not built-in newsletter or promotion popups AFAIK.
Oh I know, I'll skip all of this trouble and just ask AI instead!

The AI hallucinates and gives you a shortcut that doesn't actually exist

cloudflare decides it doesnt like your user agent or IP or any of a myriad of other factors and denies you access completely, order has been cancelled

Realize that you have an ordered there in a while and you moved since the last time you ordered, you updated your billing address but it didn't update the shipping address product is now headed toward your old house.

Website wants to know your location

17a. Reject prompt to set up a pass key.

Take my upvote because you made me laugh; however, in all reality pass key is more secure, and should be used when available.
Passkeys aren't so bad. Just switch to a password manager that stores them for you, preferably a self-hosted one if you're technically inclined.

Fuck this is accurate

Who knew Yahoo! in its prime would be peak Internet.

Web rings were peak Internet. And files being found via FTP search.

Using webmail can be avoided, but agreed on the rest.

PS: It gets worse when you use a script blocker and have to figure out which scripts are needed per website.

That jumped out to me as well. Even using something like Thunderbird with GMail (even though you really should try moving somewhere that respects your privacy) has such a better feel to it.
- Yes, exactly. I'm still in that intermediate position myself. I'm using Thunderbird and K9-Mail as clients for my Hotmail Account (Microsoft).
  
  It's seems like so much work to move away from the email account I signed up for some 20 years ago, so I've still shied away from doing it so far. At least I started using a password manager a few years ago, so by now I have a list of services, that would require updating.

Alternative to steps 6 through 17: refuse to use any webstore that doesn't allow for guest check-checkout.

Don’t forget to reject notifications.

And sometimes deny location access.

my methods for downloading content for offline perusal that interests me evolve constantly. some of us have been doing for this song and dance for decades, and \

if you want to know how to distribute controversial antifascist content, ask a porn addict

wow that seems relatively simple given a purchase was made. usually it's at least 4 more pages and verifications and codes and promos

2 seems simple, but every site uses a slightly different variation for opt-in, but every variant is based on your lizard brain being tempted to click accept. The sites that make you scroll through 938 'legitimate interest" partners to get the "reject all" option are particularly shit.

Green button good, red button bad.
Those sites are also breaking the law, by the way. Opting out has to be just as easy as opting in, otherwise it cannot be considered consent.

I know that 2FA is not that convenient, but it greatly improves security. Especially for users who use the same email password combination for multiple accounts

I'm pretty sure we could make this into a satirical puzzle game.
You would defuse a connected bomb by remotely shutting it down through an awful mobile app.

But security tho! Security theater is actually super useful!

Not gonna lie, this ain't wrong.

Actually last time, I clicked on the wrong button on Amazon and the item have been ordered in one click. Obviously that wasn't what I wanted to do and needed to cancel it which wasn't a one click action.

Amazon: we saved your shit just click quick buy

I hate Amazon as much as everyone but they win because they make it easy and have good return policies and shipping. People care more about things being easy than being the cheapest.

IMAP and/or Authenticator skips step 8 to 14.

How does an authenticator help here?
- Maybe autocorrection on "Authentik".