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Privacy

News in the Age of Ad-blocker Blockers

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Have you noticed that more and more news outlets are using software that blocks ad-blockers? I happen to hate pop-ups and babbling panes and things that flicker and flash at me, so as soon as a reliable ad-blocker came available for Firefox, I installed it. Works pretty well: 99.9% of ads are squelched, even on YouTube.

But of course, news media make their money by selling you, so it’s not in their interest to allow any ad-blocking shenanigans. At first just a few news organizations had ad-block killer — notably Forbes. Now at least 30% to 50% of them do — and they’re signing on in increasing numbers. Washington Post, one of my stand-by news sources, now makes itself unreadable to people who don’t care to be subjected to distracting ads.

You can install an anti-adblock killer. But there’s a limit. How many counter-counter-counter nuisances do I have to load into my computer? A lot can go wrong with these things…and when it does, what a time-suck! Consider the degree of farting around required to cope with this mess:

  • Check if you have only one Adblocker enabled. (Adblock, Adblock Plus or uBlock Origin)
  • Check if the script manager is enabled (Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, NinjaKit, etc…).
  • Check if you have installed the latest version of Anti-Adblock Killer Script (Step 3).
  • Check if you have subscribed to Anti-Adblock Killer List (Step 2).
  • Check if Anti-Adblock Killer Script is enabled.
  • Check if Anti-Adblock Killer List is enabled.
  • Try update or re-install Anti-Adblock Killer Script.
  • Try update or re-subscribe Anti-Adblock Killer List.
  • Check if you have another userscript that might interfere with Anti-Adblock Killer.
  • Check if one of these extensions is problematic (Disable Anti-Adblock, Ghostery, Online Security Avast, Donotrackme, Privacy Badger, Disconnect, Blur, TrackerBlock, Kaspersky Anti-Banner, Freebox (Anti-pub), No Script, YesScript, HTTPS Everywhere).
  • Check if, your JavaScript is enabled Test.
  • Remove duplicates Anti-Adblock Killer (Script/List).
  • Remove or disable personal filters.
  • Enable only the filter lists you need, too many can make your browser unresponsive.
  • Force an update Adblocker lists
  • Force an update Script Manager
  • Check if the site is in “Supported Sites” or in “Changelog”.
    • If the site is not in it, please report it here.
    • If it exists, but the script does not work, it probably means that the antiadblocker has changed, please report it here
  • Try with another Browser.
  • Try with another Script Manager.
  • How to disable the update check Settings
  • How to disable the list check Settings
  • How write Adblock filters here
  • Where can report an advertisement here
  • Consult Discussions or Issues

So…no, guys. I don’t think so.

I’m not turning off the ad-blocker: I refuse to subject myself to advertisers’ garbage or allow it to soak up bandwidth that I have to pay for. There’s an easy alternative: don’t go to sites that block your ad-blocker.

Since more and more sites are doing that, what that means basically is I read less and less news.

And y’know what? That’s a good thing! Cruising news sites is one of my worst habits: I waste hour after hour after uncountable hour reading the news in its many Web-based iterations.

Fewer functional news sites = more time for living

The trick to getting the news, then, is simply to go to PBS, NPR, and BBC. I’m willing to donate to PBS and NPR. But I cannot afford to pay to read every news outlet that is required to get a full, reasonably balanced view of what’s going on in the world, nor am I going to subject myself to endless, intrusive nuisance advertising.

NPR’s national website has a news section that covers the nation, the world, politics, business, technology, science, health, and race & culture. Separately, you can go to your local NPR station’s site, and also to local NPR stations in other parts of the country. These often provide superior news coverage — of course, it’s not hard to get superior to a local news station’s play-nooz, but…just sayin’. Just Google NPR plus the local city of your choice; click on the “news” tab at the station’s website.

The daily update of PBS Newshour comes on at the PBS website late in the day — hereabouts, it appears around 5:00 or 5:30. And it’s a yakathon — I personally don’t have a lot of time to listen to talking heads. I can read a news report two or three times faster than a pretty woman or studly man can yap it at me. PBS publishes some transcripts of the Newshour’s content, which is useful.

BBC News is excellent. Coverage is superb, and you can get US and Canadian news at their website, as well as other international reporting.

Of course, this lets out reportage on the talking cows and the two-headed babies. But, alas, truth to tell, we can do without those lurid time-sucks. If you want lurid and freakish, try your local “news” stations, which are usually full of fluff and time-waste. By and large local news outlets do not report news well, but it’s more or less sort of better than nothing.

Heh. Maybe it is nothing. Maybe “nothing” is better than that stuff.

What you get in a blackout…

Another Brave New World “Benefit”

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So this is charming: Amazon proposes that (for $250) you give them a key to your home and buy a two-way camera/monitoring device to put at the front door. In exchange, they will send their delivery people — who are side-giggers on a par with Uber drivers, from what I can see — into your home to set packages inside the door.

Well. In the age of package piracy, that sounds in theory like kind of a kewl idea.

But…

What about the dog? the cat? If some guy opened my front door today, Ruby would shoot outside and head for Yuma. No, she would not come back. No, she would not allow some stranger to catch her and put her back in the house. She would be gone. Permanently gone. Lost and gone forever, O my darlin’ Clementine.

If Amazon had owned a key to my front door when Anna the GerShep held forth, they would have had a contract deliveryman without a foot.

Hm. Whose liability would that be? Amazon’s, for coming up with such a dopey idea, or for at least not asking “do you have a dangerous dog laying around the house”? Or the homeowners’, for giving a key to some feckless delivery guy, knowing the dog would remove his foot if he tried to get in when they weren’t home?

Interesting legal question.

And…

Do you really want Amazon monitoring activities at your front door, or anywhere else around your house? Don’t we have enough Big Brother in our lives already?

My god, this stuff is amazing. Who would think Americans would be so hot on “convenience” and “kewl” that we would simply abdicate all pretense of privacy in our lives? It just goes on and on.

Brave new world? Weird new world.

Minor Annoyances of the Day

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Dogs…

…park selves at back door and arf. Human gets up (having just barely brushed the seat of its easy chair with its fanny) and lets the dogs out. Dogs go out onto the patio and stand there, staring expectantly at human.

Human: It’s 105 and overcast out here, and you want to go outside and stand?

Dogs: Well, yes. Yes. Of course.

{sigh}

Phone Solicitors…

…apparently are having a phone-solicitor jamboree.

Despite the wonderful call blocking device, quite a few still get through. They do this by spoofing phone numbers that are not in service (reinforcing one’s suspicion that Cox is in cahoots with them: how else would they get such extensive lists of out-of-service numbers?), or simply by calling from numbers that the device has yet to block.

Even the calls that get blocked still jangle my phone: they ring once and then are cut off. This has to do with the way the gadget has to be connected, because of the number of computers and phones and crap that are attached to the incoming cable. In one way, this is annoying: whatever you’re doing still gets interrupted, albeit very briefly. In another, it’s kinda gratifying, because you know the bastards are getting hung up on. The ones that do get through, though, set off your answering machine, so you have to listen to that thing yap. Sometimes they stay on the line long enough to cause the answering machine to pick up the “busy” signal that ensues, so you have to get up, walk to the machine in the back of the house, and delete the voice message that’s going beep-beep-beep-beep-beep….

Today I’ve had at least eight calls, about half of which have gotten through. That’s just while I’ve been here: left the house at 6:30 a.m. and didn’t get back until sometime after 11.

Whoops! There’s another one: the third from “Bountiful, Utah” today!

Mosquitoes…

…definitely are having a mosquito jamboree.

Don’t know when I’ve seen so many skeeters around. I think it’s probably because I left a dish of water out for the dawgs while it was excessively hot, because I was afraid Ruby would slip out unnoticed, as she’s inclined to do.

Cassie prefers to lurk indoors, but Ruby will go out and lurk in the yard even when it’s hotter than the proverbial hubs of Hades. I do try to check to be sure she’s inside, but given my growing level of incompetence, the chance remains that she’ll get herself stuck out there in the heat.

Even with water, she wouldn’t last long at 115 degrees. It’s cooled down to 105, so I brought the mosquito habitat inside. But that left, of course, a generation of little biters flying around.

There’s a chemical-free way to keep them from chewing on you, though: turn a reasonably powerful fan to “blast” and point it at yourself. Interestingly, mosquitoes are not very strong fliers, and they can’t navigate well in a breeze. Right now we have a large box fan roaring away. Whenever I work up enough energy to get up, I’ll turn on the other three table fans in this room. The box fan is sitting here next to the sliding door, because I take it out onto the deck at breakfast time by way of discouraging the little biters in the morning.

Incompetence…

…Really? Is it really possible that I could get the date of a Mayo Clinic appointment wrong not once, not twice, but three times?

Entre nous, I begin to doubt it.

The journey from my house to the Mayo is halfway across the galaxy. I just simply HATE driving out there. So when I needed to traipse across town by way of finding out why whatever ails me has been hanging on for the past five and a half months, I was not pleased.

I had a meeting in Scottsdale this morning, which would put me about halfway there. So I arranged an appointment at 9:10. This meant that the errands I needed to do while I was in the area where the group meets had to be deferred until next week, and some of them are things I would like to get done this week, not sometime in the far future.

So I leave the meeting early and fly across Scottsdale headed toward Payson — for reasons I can’t imagine, the Mayo built its office complex damn near out to Fountain Hills, which borders the freaking Beeline Highway. Naturally, Shea Blvd, the only way to get out there, is all dug up with “lane closed” signs all over the place. But I hit the campus just in time: run up the parking garage stairs and race into the reception area, only to be told…

“Oh, that’s not today: that’s next week! :-)”

Son. Of. A. Bitch!

This is the third time I’ve trudged way to hell and gone almost to freaking Fountain Hills and been told the appointment I had on my calendar was not for that day but for a week hence.

• The first time, I put it down to my usual old-lady incompetence.

• The second time, I was really pissed.

• But this time? Now I’m beginning to wonder.

Does it really make sense that I would get the date wrong for a trip I truly hate loathe and despise three times?

I go to a whole lot of doctors, dentists, veterinarians, car mechanics, and whatnot. Why would this keep happening only at the Mayo? It never happens with Young Dr. Kildare or CardioDoc or the glasses guy or the dentist or the hair stylist or the vet or the business meetings or choir…so why would it happen with the Mayo and only with the Mayo? Why would these errors consistently be exactly one week off, when they’re usually made pretty far out in the future? (This one wasn’t: I made it a few days ago, but mostly you’re scheduling three or four weeks down the line.)

(Wow! Here’s the fourth call from Bountiful! This guy just does not give up! Now we’re at about 9 nuisance calls today.)

So, yeah: does it really make sense that this kind of scheduling error would happen only with the Mayo?

If they’re deliberately mis-scheduling, why? Could that make sense in even the wildest scenario?

The only possible reason I can imagine is that the Mayo doesn’t like to deal with Medicare patients. Medicare doesn’t pay enough, and collecting is a hassle for them. The Mayo prioritizes private patients over Medicare patients. They may be quietly trying to discourage me from making appointments at all. If a person makes enough wasted trips — especially if the person is elderly or disabled and it’s hard to get out there at all — maybe she’ll just give up and go someplace else.

And I certainly would, if they weren’t about the only game in town.

Overall hospitals and medical care in Arizona are pretty piss poor. In the Phoenix area, only two hospitals are rated excellent; one is the Mayo and one is a facility way to hell and gone out in Sun City. I don’t know anybody who practices in Sun City, and I sure as hell don’t want to drive as far to the westside as I have to drive to the eastside to go to a doctor.

It’s late. I’ve got to get up and start preparing the walls for the upcoming paint job. And so, away…

Why? Because endlessly annoying Facebook will not pick up the image you want to illustrate your post. It wants to pick up the banner image, which, if it’s generically the same day after day, quickly bores readers or makes them think today’s post is a repeat of yesterday’s. So the only way to force FB to use an image that has anything to do with your post is to change the banner image to fit the subject of the day. That means today’s banner image (a historic photo of four Nazis, for example) bears no relation whatsoever to the topic of yesterday’s post (ruminations on power outages, for example). So annoying.

How Much Is Your Privacy Worth?

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Ironically, on the very day our bat-brained Congress negates recently established rules to (nominally) protect our privacy on the Internet, along comes this proposal from my insurance broker:

If I would like to cut this year’s $1,200+ tab for auto insurance, Safeco proposes that I should allow them to attach a “Right Track” device to my car. For 90 days, this thing tracks my driving habits: every time I start the car, every time I touch the gas pedal, every time I hit the brakes: how fast I go, when I go, and how long it takes me to get there.

It does not, he insists, distinguish whether I’m on a freeway or a surface street or a dirt road, nor does it (says he) know where I’m going. Apparently that’s true for Safeco’s device, but not necessarily for all such tracking devices used by the many U.S. insurors: some evidently do use GPS to track your every mile.

But here’s what: You start out with the promise that you could get a discount of as much as 30% on this year’s premium. That would put my premium back to what I was paying two years ago for a fifteen-year-old junker. Sounds grand, eh?

Not so much. You get dinged for every infraction of every driving characteristic they’re spying on. You get dinged for “hard acceleration.” One commenter at a forum I came across yesterday did the math and discovered that going from 0 to 7.5 mph in 10 seconds amounts to “hard acceleration.” You get dinged if you have to step on the brakes because a cat — or a kid — runs out in front of you. You get dinged if you drive your car between certain prohibited hours. It goes on and on. Every ding cuts your discount. At the end of the 90 days, you’re likely to end up with only the 5% offered if you would please just agree to our bald-faced intrusion into your private comings and goings.

More to the point, possibly, this kind of black-box data can be used against you. If you get in an accident — let’s say you do run down that granny and her three grandchildren in that darned crosswalk — the police or granny’s survivors’ lawyers can subpoena the data and use it to build a fine, expensive case against you. Maybe even put you in jail. In other words, effectively, you can be forced to testify against yourself.

As one of Get Rich Slowly’s readers commented a year ago,

1: If I brake hard to avoid a child running into the street, or avoid an inattentive driver pulling out in front of me, I get penalized for hard braking, while the inattentive driver – even WITH a monitor, if they pull out in front of me smoothly – will not be penalized for being a bad driver.

2: If I drive home responsibly during rush hour, because I have a job, I get penalized for driving at peak times, but the person driving home drunk after stopping at the bar for “a few” doesn’t get penalized.

3: If the device’s accelerometer settings are also calibrated to identify harder acceleration, I will get penalized for accelerating and merging properly on very short freeway entrance ramps, but the little old lady cruising down the freeway at 30mph with her left-turn signal on, will be rewarded.

On the other hand, 30% of something over $1200 is something over $360. Nothing to sneeze at, especially when you’re trying to live mostly on Social Security.

So I thought about this. Discussed it with my son, who happens to work in the insurance industry. Slept on it. And this morning sent a message to the Honored Insurance Broker:

In the first place, my driving record should speak for itself. I’ve been on the road for over 50 years, and in all those years I’ve had two minor fender-benders — not counting inflicting a scratch the side of my co-religionist’s car in the church parking lot. One of those fender-benders was arguably not my fault, since the other driver ran a red light.

In the second place, it’s an unconscionable invasion of privacy. I realize Big Brother is watching us everyplace we go, and I realize that a 2014 Toyota is already equipped with gear that tracks every breath I take. But that doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t make me like it, and it certainly doesn’t incline me to go along willingly with it. There’s something especially distasteful about being asked to compromise my principles for a few bucks.

And in the third place, when you look into this, you find it’s likely to be exactly that: very few bucks. Companies promise a discount of from 5% to 30%, but the amount depends on how they adjudge your driving skills. Drivers report being dinged for accelerating from zero to 7.5 mph in 10 seconds: that’s hardly a drag-race speed. They also say you’re dinged if you stop normally at a stoplight, rather than taking your foot off the gas when you see a red signal way off in the distance. They report being flicked off by other drivers for blocking traffic with blue-haired driving techniques.

In the Phoenix area, blue-hair driving is unsafe: when you hold up traffic by not getting off the dime or by hypermiling toward stop signs and signals, you can cause accidents by enraging other drivers, and you put yourself at risk of a great deal worse than an occasional finger flicked in your direction. Aggressive brake-checking, harassment, and even shots fired are likely consequences.

I’m not going to put myself at risk nor am I going to subject myself to even more invasion of privacy for a few bucks.

And you? How do you feel about this matter? Will you sell your privacy for a few bucks? Yes? And how much does your soul go for?

Images: Depositphotos, © ciuciumama

Blocking the Scammers

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Enough! I finally decided to get off my duff and do something about the interminable telemarketing robocalling scammers. They’ve taken now to calling as early as 7 in the morning and as late as 8:30 at night. It’s not unusual to get half a dozen nuisance calls in a day. The National Do-Not-Call list does exactly nothing to discourage them, and Cox, the least obnoxious of the phone companies locally, flat refuses to provide the most effective telemarketing blocker, NoMoRobo — because, we’re told, telecom companies claim their old copper lines aren’t up to the task. (Never mind that most landline users now get our phone service through the cable.)

The strategy I chose is far from the most economical. If you want to keep a household phone system that allows you to have a wireless extension in every room, the cheapest way is to switch from landline to VoIP.

Here in Phoenix, Ooma offers a VoIP service that supports NoMoRobo, apparently for no extra charge. This allows you to cancel Cox’s phone service, leaving you only with the cost of the Internet connection, saving about $30 a month. Without the phone in the “package,” of course, Cox can be relied upon to jack up the cost of the Internet service — they never miss a beat, you can be sure. So your saving would be less than the present cost of the phone system. Ooma is only a few dollars a month — because it’s an Internet connection, not a telephone service, you escape the outrageous taxes and fees, which in our parts cost more than phone connection itself.

I decided not to cancel my landline, antiquated though the technology is, for several reasons:

• A landline phone plugged directly into a telephone jack will work even when the electricity is out, and even when Cox’s Internet connection is down. VoIP will not.

Yeah, I know: use your cell phone. Well, I have one clamshell phone that I often forget to recharge…what happens when the power is out, an emergency is in progress, and the damn cell phone (assuming I can find it in the dark) is dead?

• After studying the Ooma sites and the Ooma reviews, it looks to me like setting up a VoIP connection with one of their boxes is “simple” only to The Young and The Techie. You can put money on it — a lot of money — that when I try to make the thing work, I will fvck it up. It then will be days before I can lure my son over here to get it to work, and without a doubt I’ll lose the phone number emblazoned all over my business cards and stationery. These are not likelihoods: they’re givens.

• I suspect the sound quality falls short of the quality a hard-wired system delivers. Even fans of Ooma — which is said to be one of the better programs — call it “echoey.” Do I really want to be talking with clients on an echoing line?

• In theory, the 911 operators can find you if you dial from a land line. Remains to be seen if that’s true. Last time I called 911, I was choking and couldn’t speak. When I couldn’t get any words out, the 911 operator hung up on me. But…the theory is there. Theoretically…

The largest of these considerations is that when I say I’m all learning-curved out, I’m not kidding. I’m so averse to having to take a college course to re-learn the use of a tool I’ve used comfortably for decades, I’m actually willing to pay for the privilege of not having fart around with that.

So I just plunked down a hundred bucks to buy a British-made device called the CPR V5000 Call Blocker. It’s pretty much plug and play, from what I can tell. There are some circumstances in which it may require some jiggering, but apparently they don’t apply to my system.

The thing comes with 5000 known telemarketing phone numbers already blocked. So from the moment you plug it in, you reduce the deluge of calls. Then you just push a button (or #2, from an extension) to block a pest caller when he dials you. Before long, few or none get through.

You can block entire area codes. There are a couple of area codes from which nothing but phone solicitations are sent; block those area codes, and you block every call coming from within that code. Some 1,833 customers have given this gadget an average rating of 4.5 stars. At Amazon, the maker has patiently and fully explained dozens of consumer questions — if you read through them, you get a clue to how to deal with all the issues people ask about — and the company also has live customer service reps who are reportedly competent.

Its nearest competitor, twenty bucks less at Amazon, has racked up just 11 customer reviews, averaging only 4 stars. Since many producers pay people to write reviews, it’s best to discount the 5-star reviews — with so few reviews, doing so would probably drop the average rating. And its sales copy is not written in idiomatic English — they couldn’t even bother to hire a native speaker to pitch their device.

This doodad is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I can’t wait!

Cox Wheedled Down; Phone Solicitors Walloped

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BlackPhone…for the time being, anyway. Learning that La Maya and La Bethulia, who live less than a block from the Funny Farm, get cable as well as Internet and a land line for the same amount I pay for no cable, I called up Cox and whined until they gave me a nice deal: $30 less a month AND “selective call blocking” AND “anonymous call rejection.” Between you ‘n’ me, I was willing to pay extra for these in hopes foiling at least some of the damned phone solicitors. The best I expected was a wash. So I felt like I came out a winner to get both of those and a cut in the monthly bill.

I get about a half-dozen nuisance calls a day from damned phone solicitors. Don’t answer them — they listen to my interminable voicemail message until their machine hangs up — but still is really an annoying nuisance.

The kind of work I do is abstract, difficult, often very complicated, and it requires me to focus. A jangling phone interrupts my concentration and the aggravation breaks my train of thought. Some of what I do is painfully boring and all I want to do is get THROUGH with it. Any distraction means that much longer it’s going to take to get done with the project.

A half-dozen such distractions is really beyond the pale.

1896_telephoneCox’s call blocking service is limited to 30 numbers. Phone scammers spoof numbers and change them all the time, so you soon run out of space — which is annoying. There is a program — a free one approved by the FCC — called NoMoRobo, but naturally Cox refuses to accept it. Cox claims this is because its system doesn’t support a needed feature called “simultaneous ringing,” which is ridiculous because they provide it for business customers. Probably, like the deservedly defunct Qwest, they sell residential numbers to phone solicitors.

However…as I was chatting with Cox’s exceptionally helpful CSR, she remarked that most phone solicitors, including those that call from 800 numbers and that spoof numbers, use caller ID blocking. One possible solution, she suggested, is to combine “selective call blocking,” which allows you to block up to 30 numbers from specified callers, with “anonymous call rejection,” which blocks calls from phones with caller ID blocking.

So yesterday I signed up for these.

Along about 10:00 this morning, it dawned on me that I hadn’t gotten a nuisance phone call. They usually start around 8 a.m.

From what I see in the various forums habituated by Cox users, selective call blocking and selective call rejection are far from perfect. The perps’ software soon figures out what you’re doing and finds ways to foil you. And with room to block only 30 numbers, they quickly overwhelm this service.

The FCC gave NoMoRobo’s developers an award, and users say it is the most effective way to foil nuisance phone calls. So it’s infuriating that a major telecommunications company like Cox refuses to accommodate it.

Today only one phone solicitor got around the two blocking features. If and when the bastards start getting through again, it looks like the alternative will be to sign up with Ooma, a VoIP system that does provide NoMoRobo. Abigail over at I Pick Up Pennies highly recommends it — last time I talked with her, she said their bill is never over $5 a month. Even Ooma’s business service is only $10 a month, a far cry from Cox’s gouge…and lookit this! They’ll even help promote your business on the freaking Internet!

Anyway, I got one call all day long, from the outfit that calls once a day claiming to represent a breast cancer charity and talks over my voicemail message to ask, “Is the lady of the house there?” They’re now the first number in the selective call blocker. Not a one of the others have managed to get through!

So I guess I’ll give Cox one more chance. If this complicated, nuisancey scheme doesn’t work, then it’s good-bye Cox, hello Ooma.

Images:

Totally retro black phone (can you believe I used to have a phone like this?): By Kornelia und Hartmut Häfele, CC BY-SA 3.0,
1896 phone: By 1906 Kungliga Telegrafverkets apparater (Royal Telegraph Administration apparatus) at Project Runeberg. Public domain.