There's an App for that (rant)

[Metanis]

“There’s an App for That”​

Remember when you could just do things?

Check into a hotel. Board an airplane. Park your car. Order lunch. Buy a ticket. Enter a museum. Pay a bill. Turn on the television. Apparently those days are over.

Now there’s an app for that.

• Checking in for a flight on an obscure foreign airline you will almost certainly never fly again? Download the app.
• Parking for 37 minutes in a small town in Virginia? Download the app.
• Want to look at the menu? Scan the QR code. Actually, no, download the app.
• Want to pay for the parking meter? App.
• Charge the car? Different app.
• Open the hotel room? App.
• Use the hotel Wi-Fi? Create an account, verify your email, accept 46 pages of terms and conditions, then download the app.

And naturally, every app would like to get to know you better.

Please provide your full legal name, date of birth, home address, email address, mobile number, two forms of identification, emergency contact, name and phone number of your closest living relative, credit card, billing address, location permissions, Bluetooth access, camera access, microphone access, contacts, notifications, and apparently a small vial of blood.

Then create a password containing 14 characters, one capital letter, two numbers, a hieroglyph, a Sanskrit character, and the name of your third-grade teacher.

Excellent.

Now verify your identity with a six-digit code we have sent to the phone you are currently using to read the six-digit code.

Whoops! The password has expired, create a new password. Be sure it doesn’t contain anything related to the last password. Oh, now verify your identity again.

All because you wanted to park the car.

There may indeed be an app for everything.

Unfortunately, there does not yet appear to be an app for leaving me the hell alone.

 

[trevm999]

Unfortunately the solution that will be presented will be to "use X, the everything app!" or, since we made everything to tedious and annoying, "use AI to do it for you!" Instead of actually fixing the user experience.

 

[nlinecomputers]

There’s good and bad. If you live there and frequently use that service having the app is way better. I remember visiting Washington DC back in the 90s and needing to get the card to ride the subway. The card was great, the line to wait to use the special atm to buy the card, not so much.

 

[phaZed]

I refuse all apps. Don't care.

 

[britechguy]

I refuse all apps.

I can't be that absolutist.

I love, for instance the Virginia mID [Mobile ID] app, which allows me to "flash my driver's license" in any one of several privacy-retaining forms depending on what's being verified. There's the TSA format for airport travel, age only format for things like buying alcohol, and standard, with everything. All of these only appear on-screen my driver's license photo and a QR code that the entity needing the information scans.

There are others, too. I really love Google Wallet and the 2FAS app.

 

[phaZed]

I'm all out.. everything is being used for ulterior motives, or repurposed for an ulterior motive.
If someone needs an ID, I have the actual DL... but I can't tell you the last time I had to use it.
Most anything that "needs" to be accessed can be done from Brave on the phone.

QR codes, 2FAS - those are on a different level of Apps. I'm not saying I don't have any Apps or anything - but I don't install Apps to use a business or service; if it is a barrier to.

As soon as I can, I'll be getting a Google Pixel and installing Graphene. I'm going to resist as best I can, from the fascist oligarchy.

 

[britechguy]

As soon as I can, I'll be getting a Google Pixel and installing Graphene.

As a late friend of mine used to say, "You've got to do what's right for you."

 

[trevm999]

As soon as I can, I'll be getting a Google Pixel and installing Graphene. I'm going to resist as best I can, from the fascist oligarchy.

Motorola is supposed to be coming out with a phone running GrapheneOS next year.

 

[HCHTech]

Motorola is supposed to be coming out with a phone running GrapheneOS next year.

I wonder if the price will be inflated by the present value of all the future revenue they won't be receiving from data mining.

 

[Blues]

I refuse all apps. Don't care.

I do too and my wife yells at me for "being difficult" I refuse to use apps for the haircut places or even my doctor it isn't like using the apps has shown any improvement in my experiences at those places as I did do the doctor one once and regret it as I get constant notifications but I still need to answer the same questions multiple times when I do to their offices.

 

[HCHTech]

I did do the doctor one once and regret it as I get constant notifications but I still need to answer the same questions multiple times when I do to their offices.

Our health system here has put kiosks in every office it seems for the patient to check in for an appointment. So first you get text-message spammed for 3 days prior to your appointment urging you to "save time by checking in now!", which if you do does NOT eliminate the requirement to check in on the kiosk when you arrive. THEN, you get to the end of the check in process on the kiosk, and it often says "Please see the front desk", where incredibly, they have a form to fill out with mostly the same damned information. I don't know who this process is saving time for, but it's certainly not the patient.

 

[lan101]

Our health system here has put kiosks in every office it seems for the patient to check in for an appointment. So first you get text-message spammed for 3 days prior to your appointment urging you to "save time by checking in now!", which if you do does NOT eliminate the requirement to check in on the kiosk when you arrive. THEN, you get to the end of the check in process on the kiosk, and it often says "Please see the front desk", where incredibly, they have a form to fill out with mostly the same damned information. I don't know who this process is saving time for, but it's certainly not the patient.

It hasn't made insurance any cheaper lol...maybe it's made services cheaper for people without insurance or not running it through insurance. I've seen countless videos on youtube of people saying that over the last several years. They'd say xyz service out of pocket cost is $2000 with insurance but then the same xyz service without was like $800...just insanity at this point.

 

[Metanis]

Our health system here has put kiosks in every office it seems for the patient to check in for an appointment. So first you get text-message spammed for 3 days prior to your appointment urging you to "save time by checking in now!", which if you do does NOT eliminate the requirement to check in on the kiosk when you arrive. THEN, you get to the end of the check in process on the kiosk, and it often says "Please see the front desk", where incredibly, they have a form to fill out with mostly the same damned information. I don't know who this process is saving time for, but it's certainly not the patient.

You just described my health care provider perfectly.

 

[britechguy]

You just described my health care provider perfectly.

I think a lot of providers are no more happy than we are. I know the front desk staff are not, that's for sure.

I used to check-in and fill out online (web browser based) but no longer do.

I have actually complained, directly, saying that it's insane that there is not a checkbox or button in many places for, "No change since last visit," for a ton of questions. No, my medications have not changed, no, my family history has not changed (for heaven's sake, the individuals in that history are now deceased!), etc., etc., etc.

All of that being said, they'd have to pry the patient portal apps from my cold dead hands for a number of my providers simply because of test results. I get to see those at the same time they're electronically delivered to my care providers, and I wanted that capability for years before it became a reality. For my partner, I find it so much easier to check the Walgreens app in regard to whether a prescription has been received and filled than any other method.

I use what works for me, and don't use what doesn't.

 

[phaZed]

I'm not against the legitimate functionality of Apps.. but I am fully against what they share. Don't install Facebook App or McDonalds App - or they get to run roughshod in your phone for whatever they want (Yes, that's happening). I don't need my McDonalds App sharing what meds I'm on so they can advertise and sell that info to the insurance company to charge me more... or a dongle in your car to see if you "brake too hard", to save you $5/mo so they can jack your rate up for being an "unsafe driver".

Some apps make sense. Most don't.

 

[britechguy]

I'm not against the legitimate functionality of Apps.. but I am fully against what they share.

Some apps make sense. Most don't.

One of the things I try to get all my clients, friends, and acquaintances to do is to look, and look carefully, at the data any app they are considering installing requests and their stated reason(s) for requesting it.

I can't count the number of apps I would have loved to have that I would not touch because a 2-second check of this information, which is now very easy to check in the Google Play Store, clearly showed they were asking for access to all sorts of information that has nothing to do with their core functionality.

Sadly, people have been willing to literally sell their "privacy souls" without a thought, for many years now, with zero consideration of what a given "tiny bit of convenience" in the short term is costing them in the long term.

 

[Blues]

@britechguy I do understand about test results and that was the only thing I missed out on though is quicker test results but for myself I don't have any tests that I need immediate results from and last test the results just confirm what the doctor already saw and relayed to me.

Which on a note about my last test results I put my wife down as authorized person but they wouldn't give her the results yet her number was the one they kept calling and not mine.

 

[ThatPlace928]

Out of curiosity, does Malwarebytes work with phones for detecting and removing viruses? I see that option all the time, when I install it on PCs but have never tried it. Thank God, I've never gotten viruses and have no clue about the best protection out there.

 

[britechguy]

@ThatPlace928

I literally haven't had any security suite, on my own computer or on those of clients, detect a true virus in longer than I can remember. There are still all kinds of malicious vectors out there, but viruses and worms both seem to have gone "way past peak" and almost into oblivion if my anecdotal samples hold more generally.

 

[lan101]

Out of curiosity, does Malwarebytes work with phones for detecting and removing viruses? I see that option all the time, when I install it on PCs but have never tried it. Thank God, I've never gotten viruses and have no clue about the best protection out there.

I got a few boomer demographic clients that tap or hit on everything they see lol. Most of the time I have to go through the apps and just uninstall a bunch of junk they added. Turning off notifications to everything but the important stuff helps too. Not sure if malwarebytes would be of any help on these situations or not. It's pretty rare for me so I just do it manually.