Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.
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The following collection of WTFs might be slightly more readable if I sorted it by entitities involved, but it's a rant so I wrote the it chronologically.
Three days ago I read on some tech news site that Nintendo finally released a Mario Kart game for mobile. Sweet, went right on to download it. While the game downloads, I read the article and to no-one's surprise it complained that the freemium game is full of the usual crap like requiring a Nintendo account, always-online game play, and loot-boxes. The always-online is quite annoying, since there's a good chance I might want to play it on a train or something.
Oh well, it's finished downloading so let's just try it. "Create an account" offers the usual single sign on stuff besides normal registration. I'm really not a fan of that so almost never use it, but at that moment I wasn't in the mood of putting a new password and Mailinator address into my password manager. So instead I click "Google" and enter my throwaway secondary Gmail address I made for just this type of crap.
Side note: I created that one earlier this year to sign up for Fitbit. You know, that fitness tracking watch that absolutely doesn't work without a "cloud" account even though there is zero technical reason for it, and even now that I have it, it also refuses to sync the fucking watch to the phone over bluetooth while the phone doesn't have data connection. Or if you're on Edge somewhere in the woods, aka existing but super slow connection, it takes for-fucking-ever.So I enter my Gmail name and password and it tells me the device is unknown. It's literally the only device I ever used this account with and the one that receives emails, but whatever. So what now? To prevent "suspicious" access Google forces me to validate my identity via 2FA. I don't remember having set up 2FA. There's a text box where I can enter my phone number (so that they can text me a code) and a small link that says "other options".
I don't want Google to have my phone number, so I click on other options. It literally only gives me the redundant options to register a phone number or "go back", which brings me back to the earlier page. Importantly, there is no option to just send an email to this account I control. The exact same phone is set up to receive emails (fortunately enough, when I set that up the iPhone actually magically popped up a Google login screen where I could enter my data, so I guess it received some kind of SSO token, because the fuckers apparently broke normal IMAP, too).
Some more clicking around and through the help pages, I get to page where I can "recover" my account (which is frankly ridiculous since I know the username and password) by entering the month/year when I registered it (like that's something you usually remember) and sending an email to a linked recovery address. I also don't remember having set up that, but starting to doubt myself, I enter the address I would use if I actually had set it up. It sends an email with a recovery code. Huh, guess I was wrong. Enter the code. A message along the lines of "Thank you for verifying that you control this email address. Unfortunately, we could not recover your account." FUUUUU.
Back to the phone number thingy, I guess. But even after they had me doubting, I'm relatively sure I didn't give them my phone number for a throwaway account. Do they actually have it or can I just enter any number I control and they connect it to my account after the fact? No, that can't be right, there's no way they're that retarded. Well, let's do the experiment.
Fast forward to today, I visit family and ask to borrow a phone for 5 minutes. I enter a phone number of a phone that's not mine, it receives the 2FA code and upon entering it, I get logged in. GOD DAMN FUCKERS!! So I was right after all, I've never set up a recovery mail address nor a recovery phone number (and in conclusion no 2FA, because there's nothing to do that with), they didn't let me access my account with the correct user name and password to prevent "suspicious activity", but using the exact same info and an arbitrary phone number not linked to the account magically I could log in.
Big fucking sigh. I can't believe it. What exactly is the the threat scenario this is supposed to prevent?!Well, at least now I can go play Mario Kart. Back to "register account" and click the Google single sign on thing. After going through the Google login page, I get back to the Nintendo registration form which has the email field filled in, but still asks me for a nick name, date of birth, gender, and a password! What fucking use was the SSO thing? Back to the password manager it is and registering. After accepting literally dozens of pages of legalese it says it created the account. Oh, did I mention this account creation page isn't displayed directly in the app but in a web view of nintendo's online page? Well, there is now no button to just finish. The page says I successfully registered but the embedded web view doesn't go away and only gives the options to reload or cancel. Sigh. So I click cancel, it tells me I aborted the registration process.
Click it again, go through SSO, and finally it logs me into the app. I select a driver, go through the tutorial how to drive, and then it needs to download another 200MB to start the game. I am already enjoying all of this to the fullest.
All things considered, Nintendo's fuckery is, sadly, nothing out of the ordinary and to be expected. Google and their fucked up two factor authentication, however, are the worst of the worst.
"
I hate computers."I hate this entire fucking industry. Someday I'm just going to become a hermit and farm my own food.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
What exactly is the the threat scenario this is supposed to prevent?!
They say it's to protect you so that you're convinced to go along with it. In reality it's to protect them; they think your account is controlled by a bot and want you to tie it to a particular phone number to prove that it isn't (or at least have something to blacklist it with if it is), but they also don't want to tell you that.
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Meanwhile, here's a decent criticism of the game itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmiigWoELtQ
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
they didn't let me access my account with the correct user name and password to prevent "suspicious activity", but using the exact same info and an arbitrary phone number not linked to the account magically I could log in.
They found it "suspicious" that the account doesn't have a phone number attached to find correlations in their huge database of personal data with.
This is exactly how I lost my first social networking account. They told me I was being suspicious and asked for a phone number. I didn't budge. Good riddance.
magically popped up a Google login screen where I could enter my data, so I guess it received some kind of SSO token, because the fuckers apparently broke normal IMAP, too
You see, it's not "secure" enough when you have a really strong password and an app you trust uses it to authenticate on your behalf. It's much more "secure" to pop up a webview for Google to leave cookies all over it and execute a metric fuckton of Javascript when you try to log in. (There are real benefits to this, like being able to revoke a token without changing the password and breaking access for every device, but an implementation requiring a browser where it wasn't required before is bad.)
Also, every time I travel, Google throws a fit when it sees my new IP address.
autossh -fTND 1080 $home_server && tsocks $mail_clientis much less of a hassle than giving Google the satisfaction of logging in through the goddamn browser every time it wants me to.
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@aitap said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
a phone number attached to find correlations in their huge database of personal data with.
Jokes on them, I used a Google Voice number.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
it also refuses to sync the fucking watch to the phone over bluetooth while the phone doesn't have data connection
Since it doesn't store any data on the phone, it kinda needs a data connection to push the data to the cloud...
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@topspin You can't blame them if you want "free" games and privacy at the same time
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@dcon said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
it also refuses to sync the fucking watch to the phone over bluetooth while the phone doesn't have data connection
Since it doesn't store any data on the phone, it kinda needs a data connection to push the data to the cloud...
Well, there’s 64GB of storage on the phone, so there’s no technical reason it doesn’t. It could at least cache it so the bluetooth sync completes without a data connection.
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@sockpuppet7 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@topspin You can't blame them if you want "free" games and privacy at the same time
Since you didn’t quote anything specific, I’m not sure what part I can’t blame them for.
But the conclusion from that seems to be that advertisement alone doesn’t make money? Only privacy invading tracking makes money nowadays.
One more reason to distrust all of them.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@dcon said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
it also refuses to sync the fucking watch to the phone over bluetooth while the phone doesn't have data connection
Since it doesn't store any data on the phone, it kinda needs a data connection to push the data to the cloud...
Well, there’s 64GB of storage on the phone, so there’s no technical reason it doesn’t. It could at least cache it so the bluetooth sync completes without a data connection.
Yeah, especially considering what's "synced" is effectively heart rate, step count, and apparent accelerometer movement over time. Kilobytes per hour if you're
. There's literally no reason it has to take any amount of time, yet here we are...
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
But the conclusion from that seems to be that advertisement alone doesn’t make money? Only privacy invading tracking makes money nowadays.
One more reason to distrust all of them.The conclusion is that trying to get ad based stuff without tracking is too much work
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@sockpuppet7 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
privacy
Privacy is dead. Long live ubiquitous surveillance.
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@aitap said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
You see, it's not "secure" enough when you have a really strong password and an app you trust uses it to authenticate on your behalf. It's much more "secure" to pop up a webview for Google to leave cookies all over it and execute a metric fuckton of Javascript when you try to log in
It absolutely fucking is though. The last thing I want is to give my Google password to anyone who's not google.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Big fucking sigh. I can't believe it. What exactly is the the threat scenario this is supposed to prevent?!
People engaging in anonymous online activity, of course! Can't have that, it's too dangerous!
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@Vixen said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@sockpuppet7 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
privacy
Privacy is dead. Long live ubiquitous surveillance.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
But the conclusion from that seems to be that advertisement alone doesn’t make money? Only privacy invading tracking makes money nowadays.
One more reason to distrust all of them.Based on the video @pie_flavor linked, it seems to be a slimy mobile lootbox game with microtransactions. Are there any advertisements even?
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@cvi said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Are there any advertisements even?
Haven't seen any yet, but I've only played two levels so far.
It wasn't even that bad. I mean, it probably is when you play a little longer but by the time I could finally play I was already so frustrated I only played it just to see if it works.
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@cvi said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
it seems to be a slimy mobile lootbox game
Which, incidentally, means it’s not available in B⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎m.
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Apparently it isn't even multiplayer:
Mario Kart Tour hopes you think its bots are people
No, those aren't actual people you're racing against.
The closest thing to a multiplayer mode in the game currently is the ability to compare your high score for each track with people you’ve added to your friends list.
:womp_wah:
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
So I enter my Gmail name and password and it tells me the device is unknown. It's literally the only device I ever used this account with and the one that receives emails, but whatever. So what now? To prevent "suspicious" access Google forces me to validate my identity via 2FA. I don't remember having set up 2FA. There's a text box where I can enter my phone number (so that they can text me a code) and a small link that says "other options".
I don't want Google to have my phone number, so I click on other options. It literally only gives me the redundant options to register a phone number or "go back", which brings me back to the earlier page. Importantly, there is no option to just send an email to this account I control. The exact same phone is set up to receive emails (fortunately enough, when I set that up the iPhone actually magically popped up a Google login screen where I could enter my data, so I guess it received some kind of SSO token, because the fuckers apparently broke normal IMAP, too).
Some more clicking around and through the help pages, I get to page where I can "recover" my account (which is frankly ridiculous since I know the username and password) by entering the month/year when I registered it (like that's something you usually remember) and sending an email to a linked recovery address. I also don't remember having set up that, but starting to doubt myself, I enter the address I would use if I actually had set it up. It sends an email with a recovery code. Huh, guess I was wrong. Enter the code. A message along the lines of "Thank you for verifying that you control this email address. Unfortunately, we could not recover your account."
I have a similar recovery scenario with one of my Google accounts for which I have forgotten the password (though I think I've tried all the ones that I would've used). The differences are that I don't have the original computer I made the account with, and even if I did, I wouldn't have the same IP address for sure. I've never set up 2FA on any of my Google accounts (it wasn't even available at the time I created it), and I've never given them a phone number. I can access the recovery email account, and supply the verification code, but I don't remember the exact date I made the account, though I think I can deduce a range based on the dates of the welcome "email" messages for another account. So no matter what, I still get the message, "Sorry, we could not verify that you are the owner of this account."
If access to the recovery email is insufficient to change a forgotten password, then what's the purpose for having a recovery email?
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@djls45 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
If access to the recovery email is insufficient to change a forgotten password, then what's the purpose for having a recovery email?
The purpose is Google gets to know you better. Google is cuddly even if you aren't.
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@djls45 All that this does for me is create mistrust in theoretically nice things like 2FA, because you can almost be sure that they have ulterior motives besides securing your account. Requiring 2FA when you haven't set it up and blocking legitimate access surely does.
Unless you have a J.D. you can't really decide from their terms and conditions if the data will be used for exactly this and nothing else. And even if their terms would clearly state that, you can't verify they're not lying about it.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Unless you have a J.D. you can't...
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@loopback0 wrong kind of doctor.
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Unless you have a J.D. you can't really decide from their terms and conditions if the data will be used for exactly this and nothing else.
I'll save you the lawyer fees.
This is late stage capitalism, they will use any and all data you give them, they infer from your actions, and that they gain by
spying onobserving you to make money. this includes selling it tothe highest bidderanyone who offers to buy it.the only way to avoid this, is to ensure that they gain no data from you ever, and that means never using the internet, or anything that is connected to the internet, or will be connected to the internet, or is in a location that is observable from the internet, or that is in range of a 802.11 based wireless internet connection that the chip implanted in the base of your skull can connect to to report back to those that paid your parents to allow them to implant you as a baby.
Luckily you have one of the older model of chips so that while it has the software necessary to utilize cellular and satellite communications the physical antenna embedded in the chip is incapable of transmitting or receiving on the necessary frequencies. So unless you were also injected with builder nanites that will be metalizing parts of your skeleton in order to turn them into antenna, you'll be fine in the wilderness.
Best of luck.
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@gleemonk said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@djls45 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
If access to the recovery email is insufficient to change a forgotten password, then what's the purpose for having a recovery email?
The purpose is Google gets to know you better. Google is cuddly even if you aren't.
I cuddle after the fucking. Doing it before seems backwards, but I suppose making it a cuddle sandwich is new enough that I might try it...
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@Vixen said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Unless you have a J.D. you can't really decide from their terms and conditions if the data will be used for exactly this and nothing else.
I'll save you the lawyer fees.
This is late stage capitalism, they will use any and all data you give them, they infer from your actions, and that they gain by
spying onobserving you to make money. this includes selling it tothe highest bidderanyone who offers to buy it.the only way to avoid this, is to ensure that they gain no data from you ever, and that means never using the internet, or anything that is connected to the internet, or will be connected to the internet, or is in a location that is observable from the internet, or that is in range of a 802.11 based wireless internet connection that the chip implanted in the base of your skull can connect to to report back to those that paid your parents to allow them to implant you as a baby.
Luckily you have one of the older model of chips so that while it has the software necessary to utilize cellular and satellite communications the physical antenna embedded in the chip is incapable of transmitting or receiving on the necessary frequencies. So unless you were also injected with builder nanites that will be metalizing parts of your skeleton in order to turn them into antenna, you'll be fine in the wilderness.
Best of luck.
Don't forget that you also need to avoid any other potentially-connected entity (note: not just people), due to mesh networking naturally relaying a connection back to the Internet...
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@topspin said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
But the conclusion from that seems to be that advertisement alone doesn’t make money? Only privacy invading tracking makes money nowadays.
The better profiling a company has, the higher price it can get for showing ads.
"Show this ad 50K times" is the cheapest option in the basket. "Show this ad 50K times to 21-23 years old white lower middle class males attending college, interested in automobiles, but not racing cars" - now that's some money maker.
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Why use ads when this is the gold standard when comes to making revenue?
Having been in this industry for years now participating in the development of such social games, all I can say is that ads do not bring as much revenue as lootboxes...
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On a supplementary note, the social/mobile gaming industry revenue is not directly dependent on the satisfaction of the average user in any case, as the game is free-to-play. Generally, the primary target users are Whales
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@gleemonk said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@djls45 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
If access to the recovery email is insufficient to change a forgotten password, then what's the purpose for having a recovery email?
The purpose is Google gets to know you better. Google is cuddly even if you aren't.
I cuddle after the fucking. Doing it before seems backwards, but I suppose making it a cuddle sandwich is new enough that I might try it...
Don't skip the foreplay. At least not all the time.
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@boomzilla I agree. Cuddle before, get yourselves all ready. Get a taste of each other, then get to the fucking. And then cuddle after too. Optionally keep cycling between cuddling and fucking until you pass out.
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@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@boomzilla I agree. Cuddle before, get yourselves all ready. Get a taste of each other, then get to the fucking. And then cuddle after too. Optionally keep cycling between cuddling and fucking until you pass out.
channeling my inner @tsaukpaetra:
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
I cuddle after the fucking. Doing it before seems backwards
:whynotboth:
Edit:
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@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@boomzilla I agree. Cuddle before, get yourselves all ready. Get a taste of each other, then get to the fucking. And then cuddle after too. Optionally keep cycling between cuddling and fucking until you pass out.
I agree with everything you said there.
except for one word.
"Optionally"
delete that and i agree with everything.
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@Vixen So with you it'd be a battle of endurance until either of us pass out?
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@boomzilla said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Don't skip the foreplay.
Huh. I have it in my mind that cuddling is different from foreplay...
After all, I could cuddle with kids all day and not consider a next step...
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@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen So with you it'd be a battle of endurance until either of us pass out?
of course!
and with repeated battles of endurance we'll both increase our stamina! which means it'll take longer to pass out each time!
win/win!
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@Vixen I could use some stamina training, yes...
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@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen I could use some stamina training, yes...
I can help with that
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@boomzilla said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Don't skip the foreplay.
Huh. I have it in my mind that cuddling is different from foreplay...
After all, I could cuddle with kids all day and not consider a next step...
Words are like that.
Obviously those are different sorts of cuddling, just like there are different kinds of kissing.
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@boomzilla said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
Obviously those are different sorts of cuddling,
Duh. That's why there are different words for almost (but not) the same thing.
.It's almost like... Words... Have meaning!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
It's almost like... Words... Have meaning!
Before 2019, maybe.
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@loopback0 said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
It's almost like... Words... Have meaning!
Before 2019, maybe.
True. We should have gone with double-speak.
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@Vixen said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen I could use some stamina training, yes...
I can help with that
ObGetARoomYouTwo
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@lolwhat said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen I could use some stamina training, yes...
I can help with that
ObGetARoomYouTwo
Which one? My house is full of rooms! Bedroom, computer room, lounge, living room, kitchen, bathroom, entrance, basement, potato cellar, attics...
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@lolwhat said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Atazhaia said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
@Vixen I could use some stamina training, yes...
I can help with that
ObGetARoomYouTwo
why?
The one we're in already seems perfectly fine. it's got walls, a ceiling and a floor..... what more could we want?
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@Vixen said in Who's worse, Google, Nintendo, or everyone else? A mixed rant.:
it's got walls, a ceiling and a floor..... what more could we want?
Well, unless you like lying on the hard floor, or standing bent over with your hands against the wall...
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I came here for rants about Google and Nintendo. Now I need an exorcism.
