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Obnoxious eBay "please use our app!" popover

I haven't being paying much attention to app development lately. The last time I checked, apps were mostly the website wrapped in a dedicated browser which seemed an inefficient use of resources.

I have to be an outlier on app usage. I do not like the constant barrage of notifications and tend to turn phone off and delete the annoying app. "Attention must be paid." Maybe some developers should join community theater and exorcise their Willy Loman obsession.
 
Well, perhaps this is why they are pushing the "app". It looks like they want to collect private biometrics now. (Or can desktops do this somehow?)
wtfebay2.png

More secure than a password? Oh, man, someone has been watching way too many old sci-fi movies.

Oh, someone copied my fingerprints, how do I change them? What do you mean I cant? A web developer just punched me in the face and now I can't log in.

It's so childish it makes me want to puke.

But I guess it Has What Plants Crave.
 
Any of you see the Youtube FOMO rant about the new ROKU TV that won't let you use it until you enter your credit card info? Not just not let you use the ROKU apps - not let you use the whole darn TV either off the air or via Cable. That was about the same time that ROKU announced that they'd been hacked and had their customer data taken.
 
SomeGuy said:
So what is this that is so important that they want to block me from possibly baying something and making them money?
Click to expand...
Because they think they can make even more money by getting to have an app. Remember that we on here are odd-balls. If can get some one to install your app on their phone they will carry you around in their pockets, you are always with them so you can send them alerts till the cows come home, not just when you open their web page on a PC...
 
g4ugm said:
Because they think they can make even more money by getting to have an app. Remember that we on here are odd-balls. If can get some one to install your app on their phone they will carry you around in their pockets, you are always with them so you can send them alerts till the cows come home, not just when you open their web page on a PC...
Click to expand...

krebizfan said:
I haven't being paying much attention to app development lately. The last time I checked, apps were mostly the website wrapped in a dedicated browser which seemed an inefficient use of resources.

I have to be an outlier on app usage. I do not like the constant barrage of notifications and tend to turn phone off and delete the annoying app. "Attention must be paid." Maybe some developers should join community theater and exorcise their Willy Loman obsession.
Click to expand...

It's not about notifications or attention it's about stealing user data

play.google.com

eBay: Shop & sell in the app - Apps on Google Play

Here's more information the developer has provided about the kinds of data this app may collect and share, and security practices the app may follow. Data practices may vary based on your app version, use, region, and age. Learn more
play.google.com play.google.com

eBay has worked for almost 30 years without access to these user data and there is absolutely no need for that data for eBay to perform its core functionality.
I understand certain businesses sell user data in order to provide a free service, and were designed that way. eBay is not one of them.

But what happens in current model of regulations - every company that has an user base is tempted to process and monetize user data somehow because it's free money.
 
Zare said:
eBay has worked for almost 30 years without access to these user data and there is absolutely no need for that data for eBay to perform its core functionality.
I understand certain businesses sell user data in order to provide a free service, and were designed that way. eBay is not one of them.

But what happens in current model of regulations - every company that has an user base is tempted to process and monetize user data somehow because it's free money.
Click to expand...
Yes but if every one else has this info via their apps E-Bay needs it to keep the playing field level.
 
I don't think that's what's happening. It's not like a competitor has a higher functionality via app and has started to eat into eBay's traditional market. Who's the competitor anyway, Facebook marketplace?
The data collected doesn't actually enhance either purchase or selling experience. All relevant metrics to tailor the user experience are already available through info granted by user to eBay and user's interaction with eBay.

Pushing in this direction will generate relevant backlash. There's already GrapheneOS option for Google Pixel/Nexus users, the OS can sandbox both Google Play services and any 3rd party apps. I simply do not want to run instant messaging, e-banking and various apps on the same level.

Nothing is stopping a desktop application to zip up entire accessible files on host machine and send it to the company, but the users have a very simple option of running the said software under different user account or sandboxed with even higher security measurements around it. A normal user can also instrument the entire lifecycle of a desktop app to see where it's poking the system. This is why desktop application vendors do not engage in these not so dark patterns. They are caught easily, and defended against easily.

But on cellphone it's different design, intentionally.
 
Zare said:
I don't think that's what's happening. It's not like a competitor has a higher functionality via app and has started to eat into eBay's traditional market. Who's the competitor anyway, Facebook marketplace?
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In the UK we have several competitors to E-Bay. For commercial sales, which I think are probably where E-Bay makes its money, there is Amazon Market Place, then we have Vinted - https://www.vinted.com/ intended for second hand goods, so the sort of thing we sell on E-Bay and "Etsy" which is meant for hand made but you can buy a gotek

www.etsy.com

Amiga/atari GOTEK Drive ADF/ FLASH Floppy 3.41 Latest Update / Plain Drive - Etsy UK

This Computers item by AmigaShopInUk has 8 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Ships from United Kingdom. Listed on 07 Dec, 2023
www.etsy.com www.etsy.com

.. as for Facebook Market Place its a cesspool of scammers, smugglers and knock off merchants with the odd innocent buyers or seller caught in the quagmire.

www.thetimes.co.uk

Seven common Facebook Marketplace scams - Times Money Mentor

Facebook Marketplace is a popular way to buy and sell second-hand items, but frequented by scammers. We outline Facebook Marketplace scams to watch out for
www.thetimes.co.uk www.thetimes.co.uk
 
Add to this, gadgets which insist you install a smartphone app in order to configure / connect them - smart speakers, smart house controllers, things like that, rarely if ever offer a PC-based version of their configuration 'app'.

It's not just apps, though, it's the 'Mobilisation' of websites on the absolute assumption that they will be viewed on a smartphone so when you try to browse them on a PC you are greeted with huge text and the requirement to scroll down 25 or 50 times the initial screen height to find basic details like the company or organisation's contact details which in the olden days were always at the very top of the site's initial landing page. I can think of a number of websites of NGOs etc here in the UK which were previously highly functional, easily browsed on a PC and informative but are now almost useless since they were 'ruined for mobile'.
 
I was equally po-ed and amused by Adafruit now requiring me to have their definition of 2FA in play just to be able to hand them my money. They've now lost northwards of $200 in sales and counting. Way to go! I'm sure the Pi Shop greatly appreciates you chasing me in their direction.
 
g4ugm said:
In the UK we have several competitors to E-Bay. For commercial sales, which I think are probably where E-Bay makes its money, there is Amazon Market Place, then we have Vinted - https://www.vinted.com/ intended for second hand goods, so the sort of thing we sell on E-Bay and "Etsy" which is meant for hand made but you can buy a gotek
Click to expand...

Do they force users to move from web to mobile app directly or via dark patterns?
 
Sigh. eBay is still at it. Seeing that garbage multiple times while browsing stuff today. Can't just dismiss it once.

At least I don't HAVE to browse e-bay. I'm guessing others have probably noticed that annoying "use precise location now" pop-over on Google searches? Yea, the machine is on a desk facing forward, what else is it going to tell Google unless it's on a smell phone anyway? Or do newer desktops/laptops actually have mandatory GPSes in them? Are off switches illegal yet? Comes up on a huge chunk of searches and there is no way to just tell it "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! To Infinity NO!".

Of course, they are Google, so why do they even bother asking?

Phil_G said:
I think apps negate many of the advantages of the thin client model the web has been based on
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"Apps", as such, became popular when Apple first introduced the iPhone. The entire idea was a cell phone was not powerful enough to run heavily scripted sites on a web browser, so use a local client/server style program instead.

Then App vendors discovered they could monetize them in ways they could not do with web pages.
 
*sigh* I see a lot more value these days for the javascript disable button. Works especially well with the "We see you're using an adblocker" apps that I just don't want to run on my desktop browser. And it's kind of fun to watch youtube try to get around the fact that no, I don't wish to run a few of their scripts thank you....

Another interesting thing is the number of sites that want my phone number for "MFA". Now, as a security pro I appreciate MFA a LOT but phone numbers are a poor way to do it. They don't work on planes or wifi only connections or overseas for example. A *MUCH* better way is to use a bit of TOTP code and Authy/Google Auth/MS Auth (yes, it's a *OPEN* standard) which does not use a phone number.

Yet everyone (and right now I'm in a tiff with Clear about this) wants the phone number. Gee, I wonder why......
 
I absolutely hate begging for adblock disabling.
"We also need to eat and our server costs money". Servers have always costed money and if you don't have anything to eat as an engineer or business owner, I suggest you rethink your life choices.

These people like to have their pies and eat them too. You can paywall your site, but then your hits will fall off because google can't index them. Search indexing and content resolving, like when I paste a link to a site in a "rich-app" like Discord and then I get an 'abstract' of the page automatically, are free advertisements. The first is done by google, when it advertises your content on the search index. The second is done by Discord who decides to render an intro to your content for everyone - a lot of people might've skimmed over the bare link and would be never exposed to what you wrote.

So they want to have open content, use open systems and protocols, but have control of how the content is consumed. That is absolutely a no-go, from both technological and moral standpoint.

Roll out your ad-laden, adblock-disable-begging site as a closed source desktop client where you have most of the control - and see your user base drop down to nothingness.
 
Not the pop-up topic, but definitely another bay annoyance. Received this...

We’re reaching out to let you know that, starting May 15, your listings that display calculated shipping will default to showing eBay Labels discounted shipping rates. The new default rates will apply to all of your active and future listings that offer calculated shipping; listings with free or flat rate shipping won’t be affected.

We’re making this change to help your listings attract more buyers by offering a lower shipping cost. To get the discounted rate that will be displayed on your listings, make sure to purchase your shipping labels through eBay Labels.

If you want to opt out of this change, just let us know here by May 13 and we won’t make any changes to your current shipping rates. You can also switch back to showing standard rates at any time after May 15 through your shipping discount settings.

Please note that this change will only apply to sellers receiving this email.

Thanks for being part of the eBay community.

Note: I have removed links but they are genuine bay links.

Fortunately, I don't need to use the bay at all, but choose to do so on occasion. I don't want to pay someone to make simple shipping labels. I don't want to have to opt out when the default is you are opting in - somehow, that became how they do it all over the place. I have less and less patience for BS thinly veiled as convenience but is actually, "we want it all and we won't stop until we have it all". I get that for some situations with some folks who sell a lot of items, this may make sense, if you did the numbers but, to me, it is yet another example of forced acceptance of a culture that sells BS as a so-called convenience.
 
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czunit said:
Now, as a security pro I appreciate MFA a LOT but phone numbers are a poor way to do it. They don't work on planes or wifi only connections or overseas for example.
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Those are the least of your worries about SMS or phone authentication. The big problem with it is that it's almost invariably quite insecure. It's usually not hard to social-engineer a mobile provider into giving the attacker a working phone on that number, at which point the attacker has your MFA.

This is why NIST started recommending against SMS back in the late 2010s (or perhaps even earlier), and since 2020 it has been "restricted" in 800-63-3 (NIST's publication on Digital Identity Guidelines) meaning that it should not be used for new implementations of MFA and existing implementations require additional security analysis (essentially, explaining why your company's particular implementation of MFA via SMS is ok) It is also quite possible that it will be completely disallowed by SP 800-63B at some point in the future.

This is from section B.4.2.11 of NIST Special Publication 800-63-3 Implementation Resources.
 
Ill tell you amazon is worse. You pay for PRIME. And every time you go to the amazon site you get a popup telling you you need to pay an additional $2.99 from now on or you will get ads...... There is no way of turning it off I can find.


And stop using "apps" they are stupid and cater to the stupid. Whenever I have to look at a website on my phone I use "desktop view" so I can see the whole website.. some castrated view which is missing all the information is not useful to me. I tell you the people using the ebay app are my biggest problem when I sell on ebay. They cant see the description or ship dates and they are always complaining because of it to me.. Im tired of telling them to stop using ebay on their phone.
 
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