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Imagine if Experian announced that you need to pay $11.99/mo to make your credit report secure and to stop your identity from being stolen and allow you to do s

Imagine if Experian announced that you need to pay $11.99/mo to make your credit report secure and to stop your identity from being stolen and allow you to do something about it if it was. Sound familiar? The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation.

300bps 4y ago
I never opted in to Experian or any of the credit reporting agencies. Anyone who sets up a Facebook account has chosen to do so because they find value in it. If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it. I don’t see a problem with them offering an option for people who want it to validate themselves for a fee. Seems like a direct copy of Elon Musk’s idea for Twitter which I also don’t see an issue with.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Don’t creditors have to disclose that they are going to report to a credit reporting agency before you decide to take out a line or credit? For example, I’ve always seen something like this in my credit agreements: > You agree that we will give information about the Account to credit reporting agencies. We will tell a credit reporting agency if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. This may have a negative impact on your credit report.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Indeed. And it is barely possible to keep from having a credit report at all depending on what you do. But it is difficult to avoid any of those forms.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      It’s hard to do while keeping up with the Joneses, but 26 million Americans manage to do it. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-report-finds-26-million-consumers-are-credit-invisible/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-repor...
      - bombcar 4y ago
        The easiest way is to live with someone (without being married). They have credit and you don’t even exist.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Or rent and use a debit card or cash.
        bombcar 4y ago
        Many rental agreements report to credit agencies. Though you can find smaller landlords that don’t bother.
        kube-system 4y ago
        It’s pretty easy to find them. There’s almost an equal number of individually owned rental units as there are business-owned rental units. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/02/as-national-eviction-ban-expires-a-look-at-who-rents-and-who-owns-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/02/as-national...
      - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
        I wonder what the age breakdown is. I could see a lot more younger people never having needed to get credit yet. If you still live with your parents and go to college or whatever you don't really need credit. After that though you can't even really rent an apartment without a credit check so I'm not sure what you would do (I guess if you have a partner that handles it for you).
        kube-system 4y ago
        It is mostly the unbanked who have no credit. College track kids often get their first credit in the form of student loans or low limit student credit cards. There are plenty of places that rent without credit checks. Where do you think all the people with no credit (or no SSN!) live? It might not be on the nice side of the tracks, though.
- Syntonicles 4y ago
  I don't know what you mean by "opting in". The credit reporting agencies keep track of you without your consent by providing services to other companies and agencies. Have you ever had a bank account? Gotten a credit card? A mortgage? Missed a student loan payment? When I got my very first credit report, which I was entitled to by law, the reporting agencies asked me to very information they already had about my life and financial history dating back to my early teenage years.
  - moremetadata 4y ago
    It pays to check credit files, British Telecom linked someone else's bad debts to my file simply for trying to broker a repayment plan for the other person, and I got financially linked to other people I wasnt financially linked to. Especially important if sharing properties as a student. >When I got my very first credit report, which I was entitled to by law, the reporting agencies asked me to very information they already had about my life and financial history dating back to my early teenage years Thats because they dont know if the data supplied to them is genuine or not. Postal addresses were also a problem, I know of programmers who would boast about how quickly they could clean millions of records a second in the 90's (in memory rather than disk), but the credit reference companies main issue is getting clean data. A bank might have one address for you, and another bank or loan company might have a different address for you, both work in that the post office deliver the mail but the addresses are different. example House Name House No, Street Town/City Postcode(zip code) House No, Street Town/City Postcode(zip code) House Name Street Town/City Postcode(zip code) Post office should deliver to all 3 addresses, but a computer program see's differences, ergo cleaning data and recognising these differences were one and the same involved a lot of time. Other examples is the name of someone. A.N. Surname Arthur N Surname A. Name Surname All the same person, 3 different but legal ways to do a name on paperwork. >The credit reporting agencies keep track of you without your consent by providing services to other companies and agencies. The contracts signed with banks and lenders of sort have blanket clauses where they can share their data with whoever they like. You have no control over this. So they do have consent and they sometimes use this for "fraud detection", so either dont deal with them, go cash and/or crypto.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  They can't delete their shadow profile, or opt out of it. Facebook still collects data on you from your friends even if you don't want them to.
- robocat 4y ago
  > If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it Actually I can’t delete my Facebook account. I forgot the password years ago, and I get the recovery questions incorrect (I have to recognise people in photos from extended social graph and I don’t know them!). I’m not sure I even have the email account any more. I can’t delete the account.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    You should be able to still delete it with a GDPR request. However if you have no actual way to prove the account is yours then it's not really reasonable for them to delete it.
- kristiandupont 4y ago
  The problem I have with it is that it's rent-seeking. Since FB and Twitter are as ubiquitous as they are, any company will suffer if someone is impersonating them on there. So companies will now be paying FB and Twitter for this "service" not because it gives them value but as protection. That will apply to a lesser extent to individuals as well.
mavelikara 4y ago
> The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation. Remember the backlash when Eric Schmidt was pushing for identity verification for Google+. This is the flip side of that coin; we can't have it both ways.
- 8note 4y ago
  I think this is the same problem, not a flip of it. Tying real world identities to online accounts is bad, and Google+ did a lot to create the problem. Before that, it was unrealistic to believe that the name of an account was particularly meaningful
- moremetadata 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID Since 1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_account#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_account#History
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  > Remember the backlash when Eric Schmidt was pushing for identity verification for Google+. This is the flip side of that coin; we can't have it both ways. No, that was a separate problem: Google+, and later YouTube, both pushed for having to always use a verified identity *without* the option to be anonymous, pseudonymous, or to otherwise assume a fictional identity - especially in venues where people would have many legitimate reasons to not use their real-identity that aren't nefarious, criminal or misleading at all: anything from teenagers with abusive parents, forums like Erowid; Google has enough furries and otaku in their own ranks who'd be opposed to this policy anyway - and there is genuine democratic value in being able to speak anonymously - I'm surprised it isn't an enumerated constitutional right in more places, really. With Facebook/Instagram/Twitter's Verified-identity-costs-money feature the problem is that it seems the onus is on the individual to stump-up to avoid having their identity hijacked or misrepresented by someone else. What the Internet clearly needs is the good-parts-of-both: no-one should be forced to use their single real-life identity on the Internet, but also that no-one should be allowed to hijack another real-life identity - and that, ideally, no-one should have to pay to have to protect their own real-life identity from hijacking or misrepresentation either. These are not mutually-exclusive or otherwise incompatible goals - and paying for identity verification is not unethical in itself either.
antihero 4y ago
I just want all of these companies to just fuck off at this point frankly
- jszymborski 4y ago
  Big ups to this sentiment. I think people are just way too tired of this behaviour and generally looking to alternatives.
  - antihero 4y ago
    LIving in this capitalism that we are in has warped us as humans. People no longer do good shit, they figure out some grift that optimises some crap in such a way that makes them rich and uses marketing to make it seem like it benefits people. How long must this shit go on. Where are the good things at? Where did we die?
    - moremetadata 4y ago
      >Where did we die? Funnily enough I was saying the same thing tonight. Here in the UK I think it became all out screw people over when Margret Thatcher and the City of London had their 1980's yuppie boom. I under stand why the older generation in the former Soviet Union harp back to the good old days of the soviet union, life was simpler and more stable for many people. Now we have to navigate recessions about about 7-10years, have so many financial products in order to not get screwed over because the state is no longer up to the job. Life has become a bit of a free for all, and the extent and deviousness of some people to get money or manipulate people is off the scale imo. I also understand why we had to come off the gold standard, if we were every really on it, because it was/is arguably holding back the economy and innovation, so with fiat its easier to print money and keep the plates spinning, but in a global world, 3rd world country's have the cost advantage which is why so much is offshored to 3rd world countrys. When looking at central bank digital currency, the fact that digital money can be expired unless its spent, I think is a poor attempt to reduce the risk of boom and bust, good times and recessions. It also shows how money is being used by govt's and central banks to manipulate people like holding a carrot out in front of a donkey. Its a legal insult in some ways.
2setIntrsction 4y ago
I believe Experian currently charges $24.99 a month for those features: https://www.experian.com/consumer-products/identity-theft-and-credit-protection.html https://www.experian.com/consumer-products/identity-theft-an... Granted, I know there’s a free plan that covers everything you mentioned. I just thought it was funny that it’s over double the price you mentioned.
Seattle3503 4y ago
It does sound like racketeering when you put it like that.
baby 4y ago
[flagged]
jacquesm 4y ago
Or, you can just leave them. HN is currently my only social media account. And to be honest I don't miss any of the others even though they were at times useful they are also a huge distraction and time sink. My productivity has absolutely jumped up since ditching them. As soon as you start to be treated like a captive audience on account of the social graph and the networking effects it is high time to remind the petty billionaires that in the end they are rich by the grace of their users and that what goes up can very well be brought down again.
- majormajor 4y ago
  The really sick twist is that I think if you don't have an account at all, you're even more vulnerable to someone making a fake one for you. If you have a real account and pay for verification, and someone else has a fake one, it's easy to see that one is "verified" and one isn't. If you don't have an account and the only ones on the site are fake ones claiming to you... seems you're screwed? In the extra-crazy future you will be able to pay to not have an account but still have them take down fakes, maybe?
  - petre 4y ago
    Can't you just threaten to sue if they don't delete it? In the EU one could probably use the GDPR to lawfully take down a fake account. In France there's a right to one's image law that can also be used.
  - Bluecobra 4y ago
    It’s not just social media either. I remember reading something a few years ago recommending that you create an IRS online account to prevent someone else from fraudulently creating one on your behalf to steal tax returns. :/
  - phs318u 4y ago
    Defensive account squatting. It's a thing. Was talking to a lawyer recently (making a will; I'm old), and he saw my email address was firstname@lastname.net (my lastname is almost globally unique), and he asked if I had bought up "the rest" i.e. lastname.com, .org, .com.au, .org.au, .net.au, .id. I told him my paranoia had met it's match in my laziness, and he looked at me like I was an idiot about to have his identity stolen.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
To be fair, using Meta isn't exactly required, and they have no power over you if you don't use it. Experian will collect information about you as long as you take any credit ever, even if you never directly interact with them.
- throway33 4y ago
  I thought so too. Then when I wanted to sponsor my wife's immigration application, the government wanted to see that we'd posted sufficient photos of our relationship on social media as evidence that it was a legitimate relationship and not visa fraud. Once something becomes normal, there's a penalty to being different, I guess.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    That’s disturbing. What if you don’t have an account?
    - klipt 4y ago
      I assume if you have a good excuse, like being Amish, they let it slide, but you'd probably need to make up for it with support letters from your Amish community leaders attesting to the realness of your marriage.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > government wanted to see that we'd posted sufficient photos of our relationship on social media as evidence that it was a legitimate relationship and not visa fraud You’re fine if you say no. If you say you don’t have social media and they find you do, of course that’s fraud. But I know several couples off social who were asked, explained, and then showed photos off their camera roll and were fine.
- gilbetron 4y ago
  Meta gathers information about you even if you don't have an account. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
sachinjain 4y ago
Imagine if StackOverflow announcing a subscription of $10/month to access the accepted answer, all the devs out there will be screwed.
- andreareina 4y ago
  This is what expertsexchange did and it contributed to SO eating their lunch.
  - yborg 4y ago
    I thought it was all the people reading the domain as "Expert Sex Change" and being infuriated when they discovered it had nothing to do with gender reassignment.
lixtra 4y ago
In EU this is part of GDPR.
brap 4y ago
How dare they charge money for something that costs money, surely regulation can make everything free!
jasmer 4y ago
I think it will just be market forces. As long as there is price transparency, people will vote with their feet. Now - the 'sleight of hand' thing where you buy one thing and the later they change their structure, that's a hustle for sure - but otherwise, for 'new customers', I view this as just part of the pricing structure. And BTW I think they will mostly drop it because people won't like it and won't see a lot of value in it.
lynx23 4y ago
Imagine facebook charging for a "secured" account and users just ditching the toxic nonesense.
johnmc21 4y ago
[dead]

300bps 4y ago

I never opted in to Experian or any of the credit reporting agencies. Anyone who sets up a Facebook account has chosen to do so because they find value in it. If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it. I don’t see a problem with them offering an option for people who want it to validate themselves for a fee. Seems like a direct copy of Elon Musk’s idea for Twitter which I also don’t see an issue with.

kube-system 4y ago
Don’t creditors have to disclose that they are going to report to a credit reporting agency before you decide to take out a line or credit? For example, I’ve always seen something like this in my credit agreements: > You agree that we will give information about the Account to credit reporting agencies. We will tell a credit reporting agency if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. This may have a negative impact on your credit report.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Indeed. And it is barely possible to keep from having a credit report at all depending on what you do. But it is difficult to avoid any of those forms.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    It’s hard to do while keeping up with the Joneses, but 26 million Americans manage to do it. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-report-finds-26-million-consumers-are-credit-invisible/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-repor...
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The easiest way is to live with someone (without being married). They have credit and you don’t even exist.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Or rent and use a debit card or cash.
        bombcar 4y ago
        Many rental agreements report to credit agencies. Though you can find smaller landlords that don’t bother.
        kube-system 4y ago
        It’s pretty easy to find them. There’s almost an equal number of individually owned rental units as there are business-owned rental units. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/02/as-national-eviction-ban-expires-a-look-at-who-rents-and-who-owns-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/02/as-national...
    - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      I wonder what the age breakdown is. I could see a lot more younger people never having needed to get credit yet. If you still live with your parents and go to college or whatever you don't really need credit. After that though you can't even really rent an apartment without a credit check so I'm not sure what you would do (I guess if you have a partner that handles it for you).
      - kube-system 4y ago
        It is mostly the unbanked who have no credit. College track kids often get their first credit in the form of student loans or low limit student credit cards. There are plenty of places that rent without credit checks. Where do you think all the people with no credit (or no SSN!) live? It might not be on the nice side of the tracks, though.
Syntonicles 4y ago
I don't know what you mean by "opting in". The credit reporting agencies keep track of you without your consent by providing services to other companies and agencies. Have you ever had a bank account? Gotten a credit card? A mortgage? Missed a student loan payment? When I got my very first credit report, which I was entitled to by law, the reporting agencies asked me to very information they already had about my life and financial history dating back to my early teenage years.
- moremetadata 4y ago
  It pays to check credit files, British Telecom linked someone else's bad debts to my file simply for trying to broker a repayment plan for the other person, and I got financially linked to other people I wasnt financially linked to. Especially important if sharing properties as a student. >When I got my very first credit report, which I was entitled to by law, the reporting agencies asked me to very information they already had about my life and financial history dating back to my early teenage years Thats because they dont know if the data supplied to them is genuine or not. Postal addresses were also a problem, I know of programmers who would boast about how quickly they could clean millions of records a second in the 90's (in memory rather than disk), but the credit reference companies main issue is getting clean data. A bank might have one address for you, and another bank or loan company might have a different address for you, both work in that the post office deliver the mail but the addresses are different. example House Name House No, Street Town/City Postcode(zip code) House No, Street Town/City Postcode(zip code) House Name Street Town/City Postcode(zip code) Post office should deliver to all 3 addresses, but a computer program see's differences, ergo cleaning data and recognising these differences were one and the same involved a lot of time. Other examples is the name of someone. A.N. Surname Arthur N Surname A. Name Surname All the same person, 3 different but legal ways to do a name on paperwork. >The credit reporting agencies keep track of you without your consent by providing services to other companies and agencies. The contracts signed with banks and lenders of sort have blanket clauses where they can share their data with whoever they like. You have no control over this. So they do have consent and they sometimes use this for "fraud detection", so either dont deal with them, go cash and/or crypto.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
They can't delete their shadow profile, or opt out of it. Facebook still collects data on you from your friends even if you don't want them to.
robocat 4y ago
> If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it Actually I can’t delete my Facebook account. I forgot the password years ago, and I get the recovery questions incorrect (I have to recognise people in photos from extended social graph and I don’t know them!). I’m not sure I even have the email account any more. I can’t delete the account.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  You should be able to still delete it with a GDPR request. However if you have no actual way to prove the account is yours then it's not really reasonable for them to delete it.
kristiandupont 4y ago
The problem I have with it is that it's rent-seeking. Since FB and Twitter are as ubiquitous as they are, any company will suffer if someone is impersonating them on there. So companies will now be paying FB and Twitter for this "service" not because it gives them value but as protection. That will apply to a lesser extent to individuals as well.

mavelikara 4y ago

> The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation. Remember the backlash when Eric Schmidt was pushing for identity verification for Google+. This is the flip side of that coin; we can't have it both ways.

8note 4y ago
I think this is the same problem, not a flip of it. Tying real world identities to online accounts is bad, and Google+ did a lot to create the problem. Before that, it was unrealistic to believe that the name of an account was particularly meaningful
moremetadata 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID Since 1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_account#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_account#History
DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
> Remember the backlash when Eric Schmidt was pushing for identity verification for Google+. This is the flip side of that coin; we can't have it both ways. No, that was a separate problem: Google+, and later YouTube, both pushed for having to always use a verified identity *without* the option to be anonymous, pseudonymous, or to otherwise assume a fictional identity - especially in venues where people would have many legitimate reasons to not use their real-identity that aren't nefarious, criminal or misleading at all: anything from teenagers with abusive parents, forums like Erowid; Google has enough furries and otaku in their own ranks who'd be opposed to this policy anyway - and there is genuine democratic value in being able to speak anonymously - I'm surprised it isn't an enumerated constitutional right in more places, really. With Facebook/Instagram/Twitter's Verified-identity-costs-money feature the problem is that it seems the onus is on the individual to stump-up to avoid having their identity hijacked or misrepresented by someone else. What the Internet clearly needs is the good-parts-of-both: no-one should be forced to use their single real-life identity on the Internet, but also that no-one should be allowed to hijack another real-life identity - and that, ideally, no-one should have to pay to have to protect their own real-life identity from hijacking or misrepresentation either. These are not mutually-exclusive or otherwise incompatible goals - and paying for identity verification is not unethical in itself either.

antihero 4y ago

I just want all of these companies to just fuck off at this point frankly

jszymborski 4y ago
Big ups to this sentiment. I think people are just way too tired of this behaviour and generally looking to alternatives.
- antihero 4y ago
  LIving in this capitalism that we are in has warped us as humans. People no longer do good shit, they figure out some grift that optimises some crap in such a way that makes them rich and uses marketing to make it seem like it benefits people. How long must this shit go on. Where are the good things at? Where did we die?
  - moremetadata 4y ago
    >Where did we die? Funnily enough I was saying the same thing tonight. Here in the UK I think it became all out screw people over when Margret Thatcher and the City of London had their 1980's yuppie boom. I under stand why the older generation in the former Soviet Union harp back to the good old days of the soviet union, life was simpler and more stable for many people. Now we have to navigate recessions about about 7-10years, have so many financial products in order to not get screwed over because the state is no longer up to the job. Life has become a bit of a free for all, and the extent and deviousness of some people to get money or manipulate people is off the scale imo. I also understand why we had to come off the gold standard, if we were every really on it, because it was/is arguably holding back the economy and innovation, so with fiat its easier to print money and keep the plates spinning, but in a global world, 3rd world country's have the cost advantage which is why so much is offshored to 3rd world countrys. When looking at central bank digital currency, the fact that digital money can be expired unless its spent, I think is a poor attempt to reduce the risk of boom and bust, good times and recessions. It also shows how money is being used by govt's and central banks to manipulate people like holding a carrot out in front of a donkey. Its a legal insult in some ways.

2setIntrsction 4y ago

I believe Experian currently charges $24.99 a month for those features: https://www.experian.com/consumer-products/identity-theft-and-credit-protection.html https://www.experian.com/consumer-products/identity-theft-an... Granted, I know there’s a free plan that covers everything you mentioned. I just thought it was funny that it’s over double the price you mentioned.

Seattle3503 4y ago

It does sound like racketeering when you put it like that.

baby 4y ago

[flagged]

jacquesm 4y ago

Or, you can just leave them. HN is currently my only social media account. And to be honest I don't miss any of the others even though they were at times useful they are also a huge distraction and time sink. My productivity has absolutely jumped up since ditching them. As soon as you start to be treated like a captive audience on account of the social graph and the networking effects it is high time to remind the petty billionaires that in the end they are rich by the grace of their users and that what goes up can very well be brought down again.

majormajor 4y ago
The really sick twist is that I think if you don't have an account at all, you're even more vulnerable to someone making a fake one for you. If you have a real account and pay for verification, and someone else has a fake one, it's easy to see that one is "verified" and one isn't. If you don't have an account and the only ones on the site are fake ones claiming to you... seems you're screwed? In the extra-crazy future you will be able to pay to not have an account but still have them take down fakes, maybe?
- petre 4y ago
  Can't you just threaten to sue if they don't delete it? In the EU one could probably use the GDPR to lawfully take down a fake account. In France there's a right to one's image law that can also be used.
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  It’s not just social media either. I remember reading something a few years ago recommending that you create an IRS online account to prevent someone else from fraudulently creating one on your behalf to steal tax returns. :/
- phs318u 4y ago
  Defensive account squatting. It's a thing. Was talking to a lawyer recently (making a will; I'm old), and he saw my email address was firstname@lastname.net (my lastname is almost globally unique), and he asked if I had bought up "the rest" i.e. lastname.com, .org, .com.au, .org.au, .net.au, .id. I told him my paranoia had met it's match in my laziness, and he looked at me like I was an idiot about to have his identity stolen.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

To be fair, using Meta isn't exactly required, and they have no power over you if you don't use it. Experian will collect information about you as long as you take any credit ever, even if you never directly interact with them.

throway33 4y ago
I thought so too. Then when I wanted to sponsor my wife's immigration application, the government wanted to see that we'd posted sufficient photos of our relationship on social media as evidence that it was a legitimate relationship and not visa fraud. Once something becomes normal, there's a penalty to being different, I guess.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  That’s disturbing. What if you don’t have an account?
  - klipt 4y ago
    I assume if you have a good excuse, like being Amish, they let it slide, but you'd probably need to make up for it with support letters from your Amish community leaders attesting to the realness of your marriage.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > government wanted to see that we'd posted sufficient photos of our relationship on social media as evidence that it was a legitimate relationship and not visa fraud You’re fine if you say no. If you say you don’t have social media and they find you do, of course that’s fraud. But I know several couples off social who were asked, explained, and then showed photos off their camera roll and were fine.
gilbetron 4y ago
Meta gathers information about you even if you don't have an account. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

sachinjain 4y ago

Imagine if StackOverflow announcing a subscription of $10/month to access the accepted answer, all the devs out there will be screwed.

andreareina 4y ago
This is what expertsexchange did and it contributed to SO eating their lunch.
- yborg 4y ago
  I thought it was all the people reading the domain as "Expert Sex Change" and being infuriated when they discovered it had nothing to do with gender reassignment.

lixtra 4y ago

In EU this is part of GDPR.

brap 4y ago

How dare they charge money for something that costs money, surely regulation can make everything free!

jasmer 4y ago

I think it will just be market forces. As long as there is price transparency, people will vote with their feet. Now - the 'sleight of hand' thing where you buy one thing and the later they change their structure, that's a hustle for sure - but otherwise, for 'new customers', I view this as just part of the pricing structure. And BTW I think they will mostly drop it because people won't like it and won't see a lot of value in it.

lynx23 4y ago

Imagine facebook charging for a "secured" account and users just ditching the toxic nonesense.

johnmc21 4y ago

[dead]