But scammers can just use stolen IDs. So they would be able to get away, while the person who’s ID was used now gets cops showing up and lawsuits. I agree that it makes sense sites would want to have something. Just seems like much like other options, really low effort scammers might get stopped here and there, but everyone else has yet another way for their identification to be stolen. It is hard to figure out how to deal with very real problems for sure. Just seems like gov IDs should not be the only option with how bad sites are at data breeches. Though I am not sure what options would be good for the situations where needing to have tax documents tied to sales/income for regular people that don’t have like an LLC.

Microsoft has been a major annoyance on me with passkeys. I don’t like not knowing for sure that I can get back into an account if any of my devices get fucked (authenticators are nice and I do have some things setup but always worry if my phone is broken or lost out of nowhere). They (Microsoft) have such a dark pattern way of pushing passkeys. When I have to help someone get into their MS account at work (normal consumer PC stuff not IT/corp stuff) which is already hard since the people I try to help already don’t tend to realize how important even simple things they don’t think about WILL fuck them later. Some examples are stereotypical “boomers” that default to adding their land-line when an account asks for a phone number, or that they were even making an account (another dark pattern from Windows 8 where sooooo many people created @outlook.com accounts without really paying attention).

Obviously I experience a higher than average amount of tech illiterate folks (that also seem to just not care like shit is still the Windows 7 and earlier times). But Microsoft pushes dialog prompts/boxes for physical security keys and passkeys in a way that at first seems like the person has one of those setup. In some cases trying to sign into an account without a passkey/security key it will do what I expect. Give an extra option to not keep using a password or password+text/email code, or setup passkeys to “not have to worry about remembering passwords”. Though I still think they don’t really clearly explain how crucially important it is to make sure the person’s information for the account is correct and making damn sure to know recovery options if anything happens.

But I started seeing just a box pop-up that looks like a system prompt that only gives two options. Enter your PIN/insert security key, or to use the authenticator app. No obvious option for picking that neither are setup. The only way for not using those is to click the X on the top-right of the prompt. In some cases I have seen people click on the options and it just acts like they are setup. Pick the authenticator option and it asks for the code on an app/device that doesn’t exist. In the cases that it does start the process of setting up passkeys, I still feel like they are trying to trick people into it rather than the users choosing to do it.

Again I deal with more than average “I’m not a ‘techy’!” kinds of people along with older folks. But it really does seem like any level of tech literacy keeps getting worse based on running into more and more people of all ages. Which is what freaks me out about how these things are suddenly seemingly pushed on folks at the worst moments. A lot of people first trying to setup their new device just want to get into it as fast as possible, and really don’t understand how they can just lose access to so many things they didn’t realize are now tied together. Let alone be aware that they should export those things to something that isn’t tied to the OS in the event they for some reason want to get something else (PC to Mac/Mac to PC/Android to iOS/iOS to Android/etc).

I wish I could give more than one upvote for the commitment to the bit on this.

I was excited to quote the sketch when my friend decided to live van life a long time ago. But he was too young to know about it (I made sure to show it to him before he left). Then he ended up taking a job for a rafting/tubing company for the summer. He actually did end-up “living in a van down by the river.”

For real. I would imagine that the US agencies that have the same levels of access/authority could (maybe already do) have the same access as China to US cars. Pretty sure that the levels of real surveillance/spying can force access with the ability to gag the manufacturers from taking to open court via national security. If that doesn’t work, they can flip already existing employees or get agents hired at the companies without the company itself knowing to insert backdoors (or find zero-day stuff that they will not disclose to keep as long as possible).

At least with China the nature of known laws regarding forcing compliance is more or less known. With the US it is much more hidden and pretend “it can’t be done because laws.” Anything the US claims the “evil CeeCeePee” does/could do are shit the US already can/does do to spy on/fuck with stuff sold to citizens and people buying abroad. If Chinese computers/infrastructure components can’t be trusted because “they might”, then no one should trust the same things from the US for the same reasons. Any nation with advanced tech and major “defense” budgets can (or eventually) get access to any of the computer/“smart” tech. But China is always painted as being “evil/scary” by default to make people think the US or other major powers don’t actively do the same or more of it.

The real problem with EVs (and combustion cars with so many bells and whistles) are how much more attack surface for governments or even hackers that just love finding flaws just for pranks. The more computers in the cars that replace previously analog items means more ways to gain access. Hell people act like people with FlipperZero or similar tools weren’t showing lack of security with unlocking, starting, etc. cars and showing it online it can be done. And that insurance, manufacturers, or companies like All Star can disable cars for lots of reasons, and get data from the passengers and their devices (and sell that data).