Data Mining Rejected

I had the wonderful pleasure recently of a website being upset I was using a VPN to block their bullshit.

I get really annoyed with companies who think that they can take all of the data in the world and sell it at our expense. I guess it's not surprising, because in all reality "data is the new oil" is definitely a term that I heard years ago that rings true every single day. James Corbett is who I heard it from, and I remember it very well.

I was using a site the other day for some stuff and I needed to log into it. When I tried to log in though, it gave me some bullshit error. I have run into this before, where the company is upset that I use a VPN that blocks their data harvesting capabilities and fiend-ish behavior so they block the connection. It's pretty fucking ridiculous if you ask me!

I had to turn off my VPN for a minute so that I could log into the fucker, because it was indeed something that I needed to log into as they sent me a message about something I was interested in figuring out. Once I got to the site though, I turned that fucking VPN back on real quick so that the damn pricks couldn't harvest me any longer.

This type of thing really annoys me, because it's certainly not a behavior done to protect anybody except the company. They make these things seem all glossy and cute by saying it's for our safety or some shit. They could give a fuck less about us, but want to maintain as much maximum profit as possible so they get mad at the users who are savvy and want to get their stuff in an increased protection state. Fuck 'em is what I say!

I thankfully got in and did what I needed to, but it really got me frustrated that these assholes wouldn't let me log into their site when I'm using a VPN. I could certainly understand if it was an added security step to do a captcha or something, but this was clearly because I was using a VPN that they were upset. That is completely Web 2.0 behavior; trying to maximize as much profit extraction from the user as possible.

I am hoping that we can shift away from this type of vulture behavior, but I suspect we are a long ways off from that. With the crazy shit going on in the world we are living in today, there is such a focus of profit over everything else which is really messed up at the end of the day. I think what's really challenging too is that so many people really aren't aware of this type of thing going on, and are okay with it. I think most of the people here on Hive are a different breed and would know better, but the average citizen of the world has absolutely no clue. That's not good!

Hopefully we can change that paradigm.. because it certainly needs to be changed!