Thursdays are normally Premium subscriber issues only, but I put most of this one above the paywall because sometimes I'm just that way (also it's a cool story). Anyway, wanna sign up?

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/subsc…

Bluesky asked me to give my ID information and documents to a third party provider when Australia introduced its under-16 ban a month or two ago.

I deleted Bluesky.

If any Discord server I use starts asking for age-verification, that's the day I leave that server.

It's one thing to be asked to trust Discord (or whatever other company) who you know you're dealing with because that's their name on the website. I can decide if I trust them or not. It's another thing for them to be using some third party who I never heard of and have no idea if I should trust.

lol and these came in just now.

I have yet to receive any notification from Discord or the third party they blame.

Gotten a bunch of crap from spam signups though, which is I guess notification of a form?

@paco

@alice @ElBeeToots The correct way to safely store sensitive personal data is *not to fucking do it* unless storing that data is necessary to carry out your customer's task and then, and this is the important bit, *delete the god damned data once you're through with it!!!!*

Since I know that nobody is good at storing personal data securely, I'm extremely reticent to give any data to anyone. If you want to verify my age, fine, you can look, and then you've done it and don't need it anymore

I agree. My dermatologist wanted to scan a copy of my ID and I didn’t want them to. I got into a bit of friction at the check-in desk. Ultimately I asked “are you going to refuse to do business with me if I don’t let you scan my ID?” And they relented.

Medical companies are notorious for having bad cyber security. It’s bad enough that these folks have my medical records. But that’s what they do, so they must. No need to give them anything optional to store.

Sure, if the need to keep the data is ongoing and known, it makes sense to keep it. Most of the time, though, they keep the data just in case they might need it again in the future for some as yet unknown purpose. That should not be allowed.

This is also why I almost never accept store credit for a refund. No, I gave you money for the thing, and now you have the thing so you need to give me back the money.

@StarkRG @alice Authorities like your national government or financial service providers like banks have to permanently store personal data, some of it sensitive.

But I agree that it's seldom necessary for most commercial parties to store that data beyond the scope of the service that they provide.

I love this headline from the Beaverton.

thebeaverton.com/2025/05/roger…

@roohafzaluvr

@alice @roohafzaluvr
My first thought is:

"Due to our totally shitty and essentially non-existent customer service, we are experiencing higher than average call volumes. The current wait time is three days, seven hours, nineteen minutes. Your call is important to us but not as important as reducing staff to goose profits. Please hold for the next available representative."
😩

I fucking hate Rogers. When they took over Fundy Cable, the service got worse and prices increased. The call centre was farmed out to lord knows where and when I moved, they wanted me to drive the cable box to Saint John from Fredericton, which I refused to do. They relented and I dropped it at the local Rogers store.

Years later, when Rogers bought out Shaw (who I was happy with), I again had to move. It took three hours on the phone to cancel my service because you couldn't do it online for whatever reason, and had to pay $340 to close the contract.

Fuck those guys.