eReaderiQ now requires an account to filter results?

[Cactus Chef]

This seems to have literally rolled out this morning while I was browsing the site, so I'm not sure if I'm in an A/B test or what.

I use a favorite bookmark of eReaderIQ to store the price range paramater as I browse the site (https://www.ereaderiq.com/watched?hp=600&lp=100), but when I pulled it up, none of the filters were applying. And when I checked the sidebar, they were all greyed out. That's when I noticed the little pop-up hint next to a question mark:

You need to create a free account to use this filter. Click here to start. If you already have an account, click the [Sign In] button in the header.

So...that's new. And disappointing. I mean I do have an account, but the account is password-protected with a randomly-generated password and I don't necessarily sign in to every device where I might pull up this page.

I wonder what prompted the change. Are "anonymous" users not providing enough revenue for their advertisers anymore?

[Quoth]

Email harvesting.

[haertig]

Use a temporary, disposable, free email:

https://www.guerrillamail.com/

Recently, every time I use this, they have "disabled sending email for today". Which makes it useless.
The whole point of a temporary email address is so you can give it to a spam site, they send you an questioning email to verify that you gave them a valid email address, then you reply to their email to give the verification.

But there are a ton of other temporary/free email address providers. Just do a Google search.

[jhowell]

With third party cookies on the way out as a means of tracking users many websites are requiring that a free account be created associated with a verified email address so that advertisers can track people across sites.

Advertisers have become wise to the sites offering temporary email addresses and may stop paying the websites hosting their ads for those impressions. That will eventually lead to those email addresses being disallowed for free accounts. It is going to become more difficult to remain anonymous.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by jhowell

With third party cookies on the way out as a means of tracking users many websites are requiring that a free account be created associated with a verified email address so that advertisers can track people across sites.

Then comes the "shared email address". On a large scale. Some third-world-country guy (i.e., un-trackable and un-prosecutable) will create an email address and publish the login details for anyone who might want to use it. Do this several thousand times with several thousand people popping in and using any one of the email addresses for spam/tracking avoidance when signing up on websites.

These websites doing this "register a free account" thing have got to know that their efforts will fail, and in very short order. They just can't be stupid enough to think they have a way to trap people into their advertisements and personal data collection here. Must be the same group of people who keep putting DRM on ebooks.

[Quoth]

I've blocked 3rd party cookies for so long I forget when. Maybe 15 years?
Also clear pixels, 3rd party scripts that track. Web Admins: DO NOT copy paste suggested code for Social Media icons. Put the icons and a link. Some of those snippets are evil or immoral or in EU illegal.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by haertig

Use a temporary, disposable, free email:

https://www.guerrillamail.com/

Recently, every time I use this, they have "disabled sending email for today". Which makes it useless.
The whole point of a temporary email address is so you can give it to a spam site, they send you an questioning email to verify that you gave them a valid email address, then you reply to their email to give the verification.

But there are a ton of other temporary/free email address providers. Just do a Google search.

Hosting companies and Google are trying to kill this. I used to invent email addresses and forward them. Then spoof to reply. Now the Hosting requires the SMTP use the same account as email.
Google have insisted on OAuth2 for desktop clients (a landgrab to track and extra security is negligible) ages ago. Now to send to them and others you need SPF and DKIM. Allegedly to prevent spam. It does not. It's Google wanting people to use Gmail and Gmail on Android or a Web page. They don't want people using real email clients.
They want to own the Web.
How many sites only work properly in Chrome or Chromium, but not Firefox, Falkon (QT Web Engine based) or ungoogled Chromium?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

They want to own the Web.
How many sites only work properly in Chrome or Chromium, but not Firefox, Falkon (QT Web Engine based) or ungoogled Chromium?

The Vivaldi browser (heavily modified Chromium) had to change their user-agent to Chrome because several sites (including Google) deliberately broke their sites.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Google have insisted on OAuth2 for desktop clients (a landgrab to track and extra security is negligible) ages ago. Now to send to them and others you need SPF and DKIM. Allegedly to prevent spam. It does not. It's Google wanting people to use Gmail and Gmail on Android or a Web page. They don't want people using real email clients.

Yup, I got hit with this a few years ago. I decided to retire that GMail account, rather than to allow Google to dictate which e-mail client I use. It was a pity, since I had had that account since GMail was in closed beta and required an invite in order to join. Oh well.

[Sirtel]

Hmm. I've always wondered why people use desktop clients. I've never used one; I access all my email online. The main reason for this is the size of my inbox - over 70 GB now, it would be hard to find enough space for it on my computer, even with its 1 TB drive (mostly full by now, due to my huge collection of hi-res wallpapers, movies/TV series and ebooks; I just love to hoard digital stuff). Also I live in a city and power failures or internet outages are very rare here, so that's another reason. For backup I do download my inbox regularly and store it on an external drive.

I guess a desktop client may come in handy if you use several email accounts, but I only really use one Gmail account for 99% of my email, so there goes the third reason for using a desktop client.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Hmm. I've always wondered why people use desktop clients. I've never used one; I access all my email online. The main reason for this is the size of my inbox - over 70 GB now, it would be hard to find enough space for it on my computer, even with its 1 TB drive (mostly full by now, due to my huge collection of hi-res wallpapers, movies/TV series and ebooks; I just love to hoard digital stuff). Also I live in a city and power failures or internet outages are very rare here, so that's another reason. For backup I do download my inbox regularly and store it on an external drive.

I guess a desktop client may come in handy if you use several email accounts, but I only really use one Gmail account for 99% of my email, so there goes the third reason for using a desktop client.

I've had Thunderbird ever since I switched to Linux full time. In addition to having multiple accounts flowing into one place (I've got several Gmail accounts, an Outlook, and a legacy Hotmail account), I had heard a few horror stories of people's Gmail accounts being banned for spurious reasons with no recourse; and so I decided having a local copy of all of my emails would be a good idea.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

...I had heard a few horror stories of people's Gmail accounts being banned for spurious reasons with no recourse; and so I decided having a local copy of all of my emails would be a good idea.

Yes, that's why I regularly download and back up my inbox.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've always wondered why people use desktop clients. I've never used one; I access all my email online. The main reason for this is the size of my inbox - over 70 GB now

I like to have control over my correspondence, and I don't want to deal with the constant, pointless redesigns that webmail gets every few years. I want a consistent experience that isn't at the mercy of some random programmer's whims or littered with advertising. I have all my e-mail from the last 20 years, and it's only 848 MiB. I've also had e-mail providers go kaput on me multiple times, and I still have my messages stored locally, because I didn't trust their servers to be online forever.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I have all my e-mail from the last 20 years, and it's only 848 MiB.

The bulk of my email comes from the decade I volunteered at a non-kill cat shelter and was part of their mailing list. Lots and lots of cat photos, thousands of them (sent from new homes, from people seeking admittance for a cat or cats, from us volunteers sharing information between us (we had no paid workforce, everything was done by volunteers). I don't want to delete any of it. I almost never delete any of my emails (except for spam, of course) - there's no telling when I might need to consult some old information or topic. Has happened to me many times.

or littered with advertising

I see no adverts, thanks to Adblock and uBlock.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I've had Thunderbird ever since I switched to Linux full time. In addition to having multiple accounts flowing into one place (I've got several Gmail accounts, an Outlook, and a legacy Hotmail account), I had heard a few horror stories of people's Gmail accounts being banned for spurious reasons with no recourse; and so I decided having a local copy of all of my emails would be a good idea.

I finally got OAuth & Thunderbird working to fetch ALL my gmail (since the start of OAuth imposed) last week (I usually BCCed to my own domain when sending from Gmail, but I forwarded all that too). I finally got SPF and DKIM working on all my domains a week earlier.

I also download every ebook from Amazon via Download & Transfer option as not only can Google kill all your gmail at a whim, and Playstore accounts (so I install apps on multiple devices), but if Amazon thinks you have made too many returns of physical goods they can kill your account, which kills Kindle ebook downloads and kills any publisher account for KDP upload.

Also in any legal action the web provider might delete or lose emails, or that can happen anyway, or they can be hacked and read (many ISPs).
So all my gmail web accounts are empty and automatically emptied when I'm online. I have backups of all my email and two running copies on separate machines.

The UI of gmail is also ghastly for trimming a reply or search, or organising.