The kinds of things you want here, and that I think we all do, are hard.
Yes, ideally a trusted intermediary would do something like… read your digital ID (which stiLL doesn’t guarantee it’s you providing it, up to a point), examine a birthdate, and sign an attestation to a liquor store that “this user is 21 or older” without you ever having to fork over your name, address, or biometric details.
The will to enforce such measures, at least in the US, seems low.
This is why the EU is going the app route. You load your ID into an app, and can review on-the-fly what data you're sharing (including a simple "older than 18" token to buy liquor). The app also allows keeping a log of who requested what data, so if you find out in hindsight that your grocery store requested your full name illegally, you can report them.
Enforcement chances in the US, maybe outside of California, do seem low, but at least the "we cannot do it" argument is off the table when the EU has a ready-to-deploy suite on Github for anyone to access. If you don't like the EU, the Yivi (previously IRMA) project implements pretty much the same ecosystem, but in a slightly different way.
Wasn’t them finally implementing competent (if overly annoying) iCloud MFA the result of this kind of thing, with social engineering/photo leaks from celebrities or something?
You don’t need the App Store to install most apps, and can just download .dmg or even .zip files with them; I feel like only a handful of developers go full-App Store-only (with good reason; it not only imposes extra restrictions on certain functionality but also takes a big cut of your sale).
AI used em-dashes initially in that type of sentence structure, but more recently moved to a mix of semicolons and commas, at least from what I've been seeing.
I never claimed the author doesn't exist.
$500 is objectively a large amount for a gift card. Off-the-shelf gift cards with predetermined amounts are almost always substantially less than this.
Even a small claims filing in the US, which might have a $10k limit, does damage to Apple far enough above the effort it takes them to “just intelligently fix it” to make it worth their time.
If Apple doesn’t show up, they’ll lose and the filer will get a default judgement, for which they hopefully asked/made the case for $10k. I’m sure they can arrange to have it enforced against a local Apple Store to seize not product, but operational working assets, if they’re creative a bit. If Apple has anyone competent in Legal they won’t let it get that far, though.
Then again, if they do show up, they’ll pay a lawyer well more than an hour of time, probably by a lot, and still have to argue against a likely well-prepared person, with proof of purchase, etc., (legitimate) sob story of lost time, digital assets, and the like, and likely won’t endear themselves to the court.
And of course for a business, an actual court filing (or arbitration if it gets forced on them, with competent counsel) could be even worse.
I don't think they'd work out if everyone used them. It's essentially companies paying for your shopping data. But a) they overpay to incentivise you, b) I'm buying the same boring things on rotation so it's close to useless to them.
They’re great entertainment pieces, and almost a commentary on the state of the world through the lens of microeconomics, with both sides behaving in a way they think is best for them.
For the baiters, they get engagement and, sometimes, the feeling of revenge for a scam visited upon an elderly relative; for the scammer, maybe it’s worse, as we know some people are trafficked into places then forced to scam people (or maybe they just want money). Still, kinda paints the world in a sad light.
I guess the days of the scammer grunts are numbered. It is eventually going to be cheaper and more efficient to use a language model. Only the scammer architects who come up with the schemes will be able to extract value.
When that happens, there won't be much entertainment nor that much ethical value in scam-baiting. We need to enjoy it while we can.
I don’t know. You can’t buy the kind of loyalty that treating your customer well earns you (nor buy revocation of the spite that treating them poorly does).
Particular airline like United makes your life hell, or even behaves sloppily and heavily inconvenienced you? You not only hate them, you actively go out of your way to tell your friends, family, and anyone who asks your opinion that you hate them. And why you hate them. (Lost one/only bag, for longer than an entire trip, over ten years ago.) And go out of your way, even at higher cost, to avoid them. (Have never flown United afterwards.)
Aside: We know this can be done competently; see Japan. They’ll even fail sometimes, but I suspect that nearly-always, someone from the airline would be delivering the bag personally after they obsessively located it, as opposed to the “meh” attitude US carriers take.
On the other hand, some company like Valve: for an out-of-warranty product (just time, current-model Steam Deck) that was purchased outside the country and gray-market imported (consumer level, just carried out to another country)… and which they don’t sell in your country… they demurred a bit then agreed to ship a replacement part to the original purchaser. At zero cost. Dealing with product issues isn’t fun, but we all know issues arise sometimes, and they killed the “delight the customer” goal.
Some companies still care, and I’d argue that treating your customers like crap while attempting to extract maximum “short term value” doesn’t actually work. Not in the long term, and in the short term, well… it depends on your definition of “short term”. One bad incident can go viral and wreck your quarterly earnings.
The problem is that you and me and every person we've ever met could stop flying United today and they'll keep making billions of dollars for the rest of our lives. Clearly they can horribly mistreat huge numbers of people before it actually risks their business. Same with Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft... In fact it's easier with tech companies.
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