[conspire] Website biggotry: was Using Linux with AT&T internet service.

[paulz at ieee.org]

 Recently I was setting up a new Windoz10 machine.  (There are a few things I need to run that aren't on Linux).   I encountered a questions I had not seen previously.  First it wanted my cell phone number so it could send a text message.  Then it wanted my birthday so I could set parental controls.  A while later it asked for my email.  It was rejected because it wasn't an Outlook address.  Did I want to set up a new account?   I skipped that and got a bunch of warnings that I would miss a lot of important things like having all my data backed up on there cloud.
Meanwhile, I had a separate IT problem.  My Rosewill WiFi router would not connect to the Internet.  All the symptoms pointed to the LAN port into the router.  I decided it was time upgrade anyway.   Having a spread out house and a workshop in a separate building, I decided to go mesh.  I picked a system that got decent reviews, came with 3 units and more could be bought separately, if needed.
Monday Amazon said it would arrive Tue or Wed.  I placed the order.  Wed I got a message that my shipment was delayed until Thur.  It actually arrive before sunset.   Some YouTube videos set up the system in less than 15 minutes.   The printed instructions started with power down the existing Internet modem.  YouTube didn't so I skipped that.    It took me a couple hours.  I decided to run a LAN cable to the next room for the first unit thinking it would give better coverage.  And after turning it on, I had to wait a while for it to update.  Then walk around the house to check coverage before deciding where to put unit 2 and again for unit 3.  
All the setup was done through the EERO app on my cell.  At the end the app started nagging me to sign up so I could pay a monthly fee.   Not clear what I get in return for the fee.


    On Friday, June 16, 2023 at 11:21:44 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 Quoting Steve Litt (slitt at troubleshooters.com):

> So then, just as a Hail Mary, I went on a Windows computer and the web
> banking worked perfectly with both Firefox and Chrome.

User-Agent string match?

If so, it's classic dumb-company behaviour, but the easiest thing around
to fix.  If your favourite browser lacks a function to adjust User-Agent
per user desire, find a browser extension that will do that.  (ISTR that
modern browsers _general_ come equipped with an array of predefined 
popular User-Agent strings claiming to be on various desktop and mobile
OSes.)


That aside, to my knowledge the only other way such fsckery can be
implemented is through one of the rare ways still around to make the
browser (or the user) do an external call for native code execution.

E.g., many years ago, there was some Citrix-issued Web-conferencing
software that I knew was a pure Java app (I guess it must have been
GoToMeeting), but people were saying that it literally would not execute
on a Java-extension-equipped Linux Web browser.

Out of curiosity, I got ahold of the client-side Java code, and, holy
jumping Jehosephat!  Citrix had indeed built something into it that
literally required running ancillary Win32 code _before_ running
GoToMeeting.

Ah, found it!  It was wrapped delivered (pointlessly) in a Win32
_installer_ program.



Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:55:23 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: svlug at lists.svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Fwd: Open Sesame: The Rise and Acceptance of Open
        Source Solutions

Quoting Don Marti (dmarti at zgp.org):

[Some webinar broadcast using "GoToMeeting" software.]

> Practical recommendation 1: Don't do open source if
> you want to participate in "webinars!"

If you dig determinedly into their documentation, you find this only
_somewhat_ misleading information about system requirements for
"attending a meeting" on https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/pre/faq.tmpl :

  Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or newer
  (JavaScript and Java enabled)

or:

  Safari 3.0 or newer, Firefox 2.0 or newer (JavaScript
  and Java enabled)

So, it's basically some proprietary Java app that Citrix's "Citrix
Online, LLC" subsidiary developed and is selling to customers on the
streaming-out side.  And they certainly _could_ have offered a variant
of the codebase without gratuitous dependency on proprietary OSes, but
unfortunately they've instead bundled it with "launcher" apps such as
"g2m_download.exe" for the Win32 variant.

It's undoubtedly possible to pull that apart and undo the corporate
brain damage, but frankly it's not in my experience worth the payoff.

[...]



Anyway, sure, the banking industry has long been notorious for such
fsckery.  But only specific pathological players.  Most, no.

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