#bytesize

Some websites makes it easy to sign up. Perhaps too easy. Are there times when you feel like you been tricked into doing something online that you were not trying to do? This is a technique known as a “dark pattern”. 

Basically, it’s a website or app designed in a way that makes it difficult to navigate on purpose so that you do what the company wants you to do. 

Here are two real examples of Dark Patterns:

Moving Company

You want to move across the country, and you’re looking up quotes. You found a website that can give you instant quotes from different companies, but before disclosing the quotes, they take you on a 5 click journal that asks you for your phone number and contact information without telling you that you’ll be getting calls from various other companies. 

Now when you get to this part, you may think “why am I doing this?” and then you look to see the disclosures, but you don’t find any. Frustrated, you decided to continue onward and once they get your phone number and only give you TWO quotes, that’s when you realized they got you. 

The information to unsubscribe to their email collection and to remove your number is deep within it’s terms and conditions, which wasn’t displayed probably in the first place.

Beat Productions

Let’s say you run into a website that offers music samples so that you can create your own music for a subscription fee:

Now, as you noticed, it says “Try Loopcloud free” which is great, but you want to know the cost afterwards. So, where would you go to find the prices? 

My natural instinct (from a design perspective) is to put the information on the bottom or somewhere within the front page of the website. However, there is none. But there’s a “plans” button. You think “ah, that must be it” right? Wrong.

The next click takes you to this page that does tells you the plans, but it doesn’t tell you the prices for the plans.

You have to go along the journal to try it for free before you are told the prices for the subscription...

Basically, a 4 click journal. The good news is, they disclosed it on step 1 of the process. But if you take a closer look, they automatically selected a plan called “the studio” because that’s the plan they want you to give a try. If you selected any other plan, it’s an immediate charge.

To be fair, at least they give you a chance to read through things, but as you can see, they direct your hand so that you choose something that they want you to do.

For an overview about Dark Patterns, check out this video:

Name: BYTESIZE Author: traversd Game: Doom 2 (doom2.wad) Source port: PRBoom+ Type: Mapset (MAP01-MAP11, though MAP10 is a placeholder) Link: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/98218-bytesize-maps/ Release date: December 8, 2017

Believe me when I say that you’re going to need a password manager because you’re going to have to keep track of a lot of passwords... bank accounts, email accounts, credit card accounts, social media accounts, even gov’t accounts.

There are a lots of password managers and not a lot of time to cover them all. So, if you want the quick answer... the best password manager, like every single person, it depends on the situation. The most common are:

1) If you plan on using one browser on a device (desktop, laptop, phone or tablet) and nothing else, a password manager is built into most mainstream browsers.

2) If you plan on using the passwords on 2 devices (usually a desktop or laptop along with a phone), you may want to use an Operating System password manager that can sync across devices.

3) If you plan on using more than one type of browser, or have a situation that calls for a multi-browser situation, then you may want to use a password manager that can be installed in multiple places.

Here are the ones worth mentioning that doesn’t cost you nothing but the time you put into it.

BitWarden: https://bitwarden.com/ - Can sync across multiple devices, browsers and the web. The free account can generate passwords, save them for you, along with notes and other important details. Totally open sourced with a sustainable business model focused more on enterprise solutions. Premium is $10/year, but it has features MOST people probably won’t use, so there’s no need to get it unless you want to show your support and make things even easier with advanced features.

Lockwise: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/lockwise/ - Lockwise is basically Firefox’s password manager. If you need to use the password on your phone or tablet, download the Lockwise app on your phone and you’ll be able to use them. Fair warning: It’s a straightforward password management system, meaning just your username and password, no other types of notes. Best if you exclusively use Firefox, set up a master password and a Firefox Account to sync passwords.

Google Password Manager: https://passwords.google.com/ - If you use Google Chrome and signed in, chances are you already allowed Chrome to manage your passwords. If you use an Android, you’ll be able to store your passwords and allow Google to fill in your password on SOME apps. If you’re on an iPhone, however, it will only do it within the Google Chrome browser.

iCloud Keychain: https://www.imore.com/how-use-icloud-keychain-iphone-and-ipad - Apple’s iOS solution, similar to Google Password Manager, except it’s for iOS and Mac. Can only sync within Apple’s ecosystem.

KeePass: https://keepass.info/ - open source software that keeps your password database behind lock and key. Available officially as desktop apps and unofficially as phone apps that can read the database. Unlike all the previous mentioned solutions, this will require a lot more of your time putting together.

Here’s a quick one: If you post it on social media (any social media website), you’re pretty much given up your copyright on that site. It maybe your copyright, but by putting it up on a site, you have given that social media site a right to redistribute it.

Let’s say you have an image that you posted on Instagram and a newspaper decided to use your embedded social media post instead of directly licensing and paying you... do they have that right? Yes, they do.

Long story short: if there’s something you are willing to create and post on a social media site, make sure it’s something you’re willing to give away. Otherwise, post it on your own website. You may not get as much hits, but you do have more control over the terms and conditions of your own site.

Oh and one more thing... just because you put a disclaimer on your profile doesn’t mean it’s just as good. The terms and conditions on a social media site overrides your own copyright disclaimers, so don’t bother.

My #byteSize password Manager post was meant to focus on free password managers that are more than enough for the average user to start saving their passwords and extra info. 

I was going to include LastPass as part of the initial post, but sadly, it’s a project that is tired to LogMeIn, a company that tends to do what I like to call “the freemium bait and switch” (others call it “growth hacking”). Basically, producing a product a freemium product and grow it to a point that they can safely start to weaken the free product until it’s no longer a useful product. They did it with several products to a point that I tend to stay away from LogMeIn and their products.

I have nothing against paying for services… it’s just that the practices that they did turned me off and while I used their products here and there, it’s never to the tune of “enough” to justify paying for it. 

I don’t see anything wrong with them in recent times to not recommend them. I just figure due to the nature of introducing free password managers, they are free* and you can use it for your password storage, *but with a catch that can be limited at any time. BitWarden offers similar service like LogMeIn, but since they are an open-source project that focuses on charging for advanced support and you can pay for it if you like the support, there’s no fear of them being sold to another company nor of them doing the bait and switch because if they do, others can just spin their own projects out of the code.

However… LastPass has been around for years (even before LogMeIn brought them) and their free offering is still solid. Their premium plans are reasonably priced should you need it. I will cover them in the future, but probably for a longer version of the post.