This morning, I had three tasks to complete that involved using various web sites. First, I had found an old recall on a part to my Cuisinart food processor. The recall notice cited a web page that (I assume) was such an old reference that the page has since evaporated. Then I was trying to review the latest charges on my credit card. And finally, I wanted to pay a doctor bill online. Each of these tasks would have taken minutes to accomplish. Instead, the elapsed total time was several hours.
Now, I am not one of those Gen Z’ers that would rather text (or use the web) than talk to an actual human being in real time. Nevertheless, that was going to be how I would solve the Cuisinart Challenge. While the URL for the recall wasn’t in service, they had provided a phone number in the recall notice.
So I called the number and I was told all lines would be busy for the next five minutes and if I wanted them to call me back, just press 1, which I did. A few minutes later I got my calll back. Once the support person took down my info, it quickly processed and a new part was promised within a few weeks. Excellent service: I think I bought that appliance probably 17 years ago.
Next, on to checking my credit card. I called the bank, they started to walk me through the process, and then we both realized that I was using a “secure” browser (Opera Air) that I remembered had some odd quirks, particularly because it blocks ads and popups. Sure enough, once I brought up Chrome, I was off to the races and able to login without any problems.
That made me think my doctor’s bill was suffering from the same condition, so I tried that in Chrome and hot diggity, problem solved and I could pay my bill just in time for lunch. So much for my morning.
Now, you might ask why am I using Opera Air? I got tired of all the popups and effluvia that I was experiencing with Chrome, and also annoying with the Googleplex in general. (Yes, I know, Opera is based on the Chrome code base, but that is just the way the modern browser worlds operate these days — with the exception of Safari and Firefox. Even Microsoft uses Chrome for Edge nowadays.)
Is there such a thing as using too much security? No. But there is a constant trade-off among security, privacy, and usability. It is a three-way tug-of-war. And the more you tug on one of the three legs, the more the other two will give way.
In what can only be described as irony, I had to switch browsers to be able to comment here, Scott 😀
What you describe is my own personal experience daily. I use a couple of basic browsers regularly alongside some additional blocking capabilities at my network router and thanks to the great little PiHole in my setup. That makes troubleshooting sometimes even longer and more challenging. It requires removing one or more of these and sometimes steps I am not willing to take to reduce security.
My last resort is to try accessing and making it through a web browser when on a public wifi but even that can be challenging, as I have as much privacy set on my devices as well
Seems that there is an opportunity for a website to grade other websites in their ability to deliver their content without breaking security, much like the old HTML and W3 checker websites. The difference here is this is not a usability issue oftentimes imo but rather one of economic push to force content and track for the purposes of making money off your interaction 🙁
I’m using the nominally privacy-focused Brave browser to write this comment.
Brave is mostly okay for most websites. Pretty sure Brave lies and says it’s Chrome, thereby avoiding many websites’ catch-all browser pitfalls.
For certain other websites, I find that the Firefox browser + the NoScript extension is better, modulo certain trade-offs.
VPNs, on the other hand, seem to be very much hated by financial institutions, Craigslist, and the Target retail website – among others, I’m sure. At last check (admittedly a few years ago) these all tended to behave (deliberately?) badly when I visited them via VPN.
2FA isn’t enough for some banks – they seem to want to know that your IP address is – by their lights – legit, which ruled out at least a roll-my-own VPN running in the cloud.
Yes, my VPN sample size is low – so, YMMV on the VPN issue.
What is it we’re looking for in a browser? David, you mentioned some things – fewer pop-ups and ads. Those’re the main things, sure. Privacy is probably futile for most folks who aren’t savvy about TOR and VPNs.
You can make it harder on the data collectors, but be prepared for some pain and inconvenience if you do.
Yes, PiHole is sometimes mentioned as one possibility, for folks who’re savvy about DNS.
But, as someone borrowing Samuel L. Jackson’s stage persona noted, if someone want to Mossad you, you’re gonna get Mossaded.
I have 5 or 6 browsers installed on my tower system here. I sometimes have to use one or another to access some websites. Security and standards conformance remain issues with all. So, too, is printing. If you want to print a web page, like an article from a newspaper, different browsers deliver different results, because there is no standard for printing from a browser.
Last of all, Linux Mint Cinnamon is the ideal Linux distro, as far as I am concerned. I do not need to clutter up my brain further with Linux commands, to go along with MS-DOS and Powershell commands. Mint Cinnamon is easy to use and very Windows-like, and Linux on a USB flash stick often provides me the first diagnostics for stray computers that show up here.
Have you used the latest Mint Cinnamon 22.3 distro released very recently? It’s even better than the previous distros I have used for a few years now.