A lighter I had custom made, for some reason... I make impulse buys, sometimes.

When, not if.

Adminisk8or

02/19/2023

You would think being on call this week, and with how adventurous last week was, I would have something to go on about this week, but there's very little to talk about.

I mean if we're talking about fun things that happened, pretty much it was changing my cell plan provider, playing smash bros with my friends, and Minecraft with my wife and sister. Otherwise, just work and busy life. Well, actually, one other feat I put forward was a combination of two weeks of work, so far, and it's not even over- but I decided to go through my list of logins I have saved in my own password manager, and decentralize my data from web services I don't use. And let me tell you, if you aren't aware, it's no easy feat.

I went through dozens and dozens and dozens of accounts, and of these, there were about... 2/5 that were as simple as digging deep under profile settings and finding the "delete my account" option. Well, that or finding it in some other really hidden setting. The rest were (and are) a little harder. Another 2/5 involved digging deep in the website's privacy policy and sometimes having to go even further than this- and waiting somewhere between hours to days for them to respond. While that was annoying, it was at least something- and like I said, I'm still going through some of these- I have 13 accounts left to hear back on.

But then there was that remaining 1/5 of sites that seemed to fall under one of two problems. Problem one was simple enough, and that's when the site is so sketchy that there's no privacy policy, so you just have to delete all personal data, or else modify it to be false, and then leave it to die. But the worse sin, by far, was the websites where they decide to "deactivate", not delete your account. I'm still in the middle of some rebuttals on this, but for at least one company so far, I've had to admit defeat, since there appears to be no way to say "but you have to!". I'm not a lawyer though, so perhaps they are supposed to and I'm a gullible fool.

In any case, I suppose if there's one thing I can try to accomplish with this particular blog post, it would be to warn everyone, everywhere, in typical 'hold up a sign on a street corner like a crazy person' fashion . . .

Be careful where you put your data.

I know, I sound like every conspiracy theorist ever by saying that, and I'll readily admit there are much larger issues in this world than what I'm ranting about, but if you care about your personal information and how it's put out on the internet (AND YOU SHOULD), don't forget the story of the pied piper, and don't ignore George Santayana's most iconic advice. In fact, if you feel confident your data is find and safe, and you aren't yet convinced the philosophy of "when not if" applies to websites and databases getting hacked, have a fun little look at this.

But that's enough of that. Like I said, not many fun adventures to recount this week, but I'll bet next week will bring some more. Until then, see ya!