Bloody hell! Suddenly Crunchyroll is demanding that after I log in I do one of those stupid Captcha things where you click on all the pictures containing 3-legged jackals to prove one is human. This kind of stuff pisses me off. Plus, the graphics on the page it takes me to look improperly formed, as if a line of code was miswritten.
Is it a glitch on their end? Authentication server run amok? I didn’t have to do this earlier in the day.
Or maybe it is because Microsoft decided to install their browser, Edge, on my system
whether I want it or not. Wouldn’t be the first time a Microsoft update messed up my browsing. Other internet applications on my machine seem to have suddenly forgotten who I am. For example, my Grammarly grammar checker didn’t automatically log in.
My daughter had bought a cheap laptop just for internet browsing. It said it came with 32 Gb of solid-state memory (It was really 30) with Windows 10 preinstalled. Lo and behold, Win10 occupied 25 Gb of that memory. When this forced update came in it locked up her system, indicating that to install she needed more free memory than she had. Had to kill it in task manager.
Now, why would Microsoft be so hot for me to have to use their browser?
One reason is branding. Microsoft wants to own you. They want every application you use to be a Microsoft application. Do this enough and you will end up developing brand loyalty. If you have some free components of Microsoft Office Suite, maybe you buy the others instead of buying a competitor’s.
Another is less above board. Windows in general – and most browsers for it – are designed to allow your activity online to be tracked. It takes effort and technical savvy to avoid being tracked and when you do that suddenly features stop working. For example, when I block tracking software, many blog pages lose certain functionalities. Maybe the follow button disappears. Maybe the like button is gone along with all the people who liked the post. Maybe there’s no comment section anymore.
Check out all the tracking that goes on when I visit Crunchyroll. All entities looking to data-mine my visit. I usually kill them. Notice “Facebook connect?” Now FB knows what I’m watching and likely anything else I do on Crunchyroll in this session.
The point is to mine your data. It is called “Surveillance Capitalism.” What you like, who you follow, even what you say is used in predictive algorithms to figure out what you’ll buy, how you’ll vote, what your sex life is like, and even what mood you’re in. Maybe even to affect your behavior a bit. Why should Google get all that info when Microsoft can collect it through Bing?
MS browsers (Edge and Internet Explorer) all default to the Bing search engine. The goal is to deliver ads to you that you’re more likely to click on. And keep you a happy camper by making sure you aren’t disturbed by a search result or page recommendation you didn’t already agree with.
The Cortana search field in the lower-left corner with the icon that looks like a circle? It only searches with Bing. You can’t change it. And it will now bring the results up in Edge.
Google does exactly the same thing with their Chrome browser and eponymous search engine. And they probably do it better. They just don’t have a PC operating system to embed it into. If you want any privacy at all, change your search engine to DuckDuckGo.
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram is an even more frightening entity with ramifications far 
beyond sharing your life with your friends. Everywhere you look, you see the Facebook icon. Click that icon and that adds information to their data on you. Log into a page with your Facebook creds and you’ve done the same thing It has moved into monitoring moods, proactively changing your content to match your mood, and proactively changing your mood to make you more receptive to content. They have run mass psychological tests on people and claim to be able to diagnose suicidal tendencies in teenagers. No permission asked.
You gotta know governments are interested, if not already fully in the business. But that is a different blog post.
If Facebook isn’t appealing, stay away from Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Beluga as well. And Twitter does its own data mining. Instead, do your socializing on MeWe – if you can find anybody you know on it.
Thanks to a marvelous blog post by Irina, I was seduced into watching Inu x Boku Secret Service. I won’t bother you with a detailed discussion since Irina already did it so well. I haven’t read the manga but it seems likely that Ayakashi Kan is really an institution for the treatment of the emotionally traumatized where people are partnered for their therapeutic value.
According to my research, ayakashi are lesser spirits- ghosts and apparitions – who appear above the surface of water.
Until this issue is cleared up, I’ll just wander over and continue watching Resonance in Terror on Funimation. Their servers are slow but at least it’s letting me log in normally.
June 30, 2020 at 15:02
If you are alive and want to have any quality of life in the United States, may as well assume the gov’t knows about every breath you take, what you ate this morning, and when you had your last bowel movement. That said, they don’t really care about us peons as individuals, only as a mass they can control – or kill as they are doing now. I think what pisses me off really is the hypocrisy of saying oh we are free and we are rich and we have the ability to change and control our lives and anyone can become rich, blah blah blah when the truth is that the United States is one of the cruelest counties on earth to anyone not in the top 1% and it is set up to steadily ram you downwards until you are dead and/or homeless and they can then ignore you. Workers are used up and disposed of. Microsoft is the biggest fucking money gobbling life controlling conglomerate on earth, and they really want to be a complete monopoly. Ever played “Paranoia” – the computer is your friend. That said, InuX Boku Secret Service sounds intriguing. I’m kind of mad at the universe today (well, in this country) so maybe I’ll just go binge something interesting… Great post. Great rant. I feel ya.
June 30, 2020 at 03:32
I really enjoyed your post here. Online privacy…any privacy really is a lifestyle and hobby for me. I haven’t made it to an extreme privacy individual yet, but I’m working on it. I was actually considering doing a blog post on privacy from a nudist perspective, but I figured it would be pretty lengthy or written over the course of several posts. Anyway. It is possible to “hide” from the internet. Michael Bazzel has a few books out and a podcast show out where he walks you through disappearing online and in life. He takes things to the extreme but knows not everyone can vanish like he has, but he also shows you how to improve your privacy and do things that can help you from being tracked all over the internet. If you go to inteltechniques.com you will find links to his book and podcast. I encourage you to check it out. Until then I will leave you with this. 1) You need a VPN servce. I use protonVPN and Protonmail as my VPN and personal email provider. 2) Use Firefox browser exclusively. I will make a blog post showing how to configure it for enhanced privacy. 3) Use ProtonMail as an encrypted email provider. 4) Don’t ever use your real name or phone number for any online services that don’t require it. 5) Most important…remove all social media apps from your phone!! Unless there is a very valid reason to have a social media or similar app on your phone, you should remove it and use the browser version of the website. Ok, that’s probably enough for now, but stay tuned for some blog posts.
June 29, 2020 at 19:14
I’m not on any of those social media sites. I mean, I’m sure the ones I use do their own data mining. I use wattpad, youtube, slug, reddit, lolcow, and saidit.
I think none of those are as bad as facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. But they’re probably doing their own sketchy stuff. I don’t have faith in any online platforms. But if I ever get really paranoid, I guess that’s what TOR and VPNs are for.
July 1, 2020 at 13:37
I use NordVPN mainly to watch Youtube content that isn’t available in the US. I have to make sure I log out of Youtube first or it doesn’t work. VPNs are not useful for any web site that requires a login. They know who and where you are from the registration information. A tracking cookie placed on your PC from that one time you didn’t go thru the VPN can also be a giveaway.
Knowing how to go into your cookies and look at them and delete individual cookies is useful. There is an option to delete all cookies. If you do, suddenly you may find a lot of web sites don’t work like they once did. All the customization is done via cookies on your machine.
Mozilla Firefox is probably the best major browser for personal security. To my knowledge, the Mozilla org doesn’t do individually identifiable data mining. (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. all have this as central to their business plan.) They also have the most options for personalization and security.
Every major content provider makes money off data mining. Even WordPress and Gravitar. Some more, some less. There are a few who don’t. MeWe is one. But the problem is they are so small the odds you’ll find your existing friends are long and any new audience you create there is going to be limited.
If you choose to block all cookies, half the internet won’t work.
I installed Ghostery (a Firefox extension) just to track and selectively block trackers. I go to Crunchyroll and see 15 different entities trying to track my online activity. If I block all trackers, I can’t access the anime, even with a premium membership. Ghostery gives me a chance to block most trackers and figure out which ones I must allow.
Trackers aren’t all bad. They are how CR can let to restart an anime exactly where you left off. They are often used in authentication – some random hacker isn’t going to have your cookie. Trackers can be used by the web site itself for statistical purposes. But ones from Double Click or AdRollRoundTrip are guaranteed to be nothing but someone selling your data.
Whether any of this matters to someone is an entirely different matter. Most people go blithely on their way and couldn’t care less. I can’t say they are wrong.