y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2015/12-December/01.xhtml

<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'I am not a number',
	'body' => <<<END
<p>
	I remember what I did a couple days ago that I thought was important but could net remember at the time.
	I read a piece of mail containing one of those &quot;prescreened credit offers&quot;.
	It said that you could opt out of receiving those via telephone.
	This made me quite annoyed, as you should not require a telephone for opting out of having random companies peruse your credit report and send you junk mail.
	I did some research, and it turns out that you can also opt out over the Web, as you should be able to.
	However, the <a href="https://www.optoutprescreen.com/">credit prescreening opt-out</a> website has an annoying feature where it checks to make sure you are within the United States before it will allow you to fill out their online form.
	They do this by checking your $a[IP] address, which is an idiotic method.
	Anyone using $a[Tor] is going to have a random global $a[IP] address, regardless of where they physically sit.
	I had to try several times before I could fill out the form completely.
	For someone using a $a[VPN] located outside the country, it might be impossible to fill out the form at all.
	The blocking of out-of-country $a[IP] addresses is made even more idiotic because the form asks for your home address, so they could instead figure out your location from that.
	There is no need to check your $a[IP] address for its location.
	I mainly only filled out the form to assert that it should be possible to opt out without a telephone.
	While the form asked for a telephone number, providing one was optional.
	There were two options for opting out.
	The first allows you to opt out of these offers, though only for five years.
	The second allows you to opt out permanently, but but requires physical documents be signed.
	I chose the five-year opt-out to avoid the paperwork.
	None of this would be necessary if the credit reporting agencies were not being jerks though.
	It seems that they are giving lists of potential debtors to credit agencies, and this opt-out form tells the credit reporting agencies to knock it off and get you off the lists that they give out.
	They should respect people&apos;s privacy better and not give out these lists in the first place.
	Credit agencies should wait for applicants to come to them.
</p>
<p>
	I went shopping today as my vegan food supplies are running a bit low.
	As I am on foot, I did not get as much as I wanted because I could not carry it all, so I might need to go out again soon.
	The closest grocery store has one of those tracking programs where if you do not carry one of their purchase-tracking cards with you so they can chain your purchases together, they charge you a higher price for merchandise.
	Essentially, they are charging customer for the right to privacy.
	When I shop there, I always ask for a new card.
	That way, they do not charge me to exercise my right to privacy, but I am able to exercise it none the less.
	Usually, the customer representative tells me that I can register it with my personal information online, but I do not actually do that.
	Today, the customer representative instead asked me to fill out the online application in-store using the tablet that the store has set up just for that purpose.
	I tried to comply, but the form had a telephone number field and would not allow me to leave it blank.
	I talked to the representative about it, and she just had me abort the registration.
	Had the registration form allowed me to submit my information without a telephone number, the store would have had my name, email address, and postal address.
	Because of their demand that I present them with a telephone number, they got nothing.
	It worked out well for me today, but I do wish that people would get over their obsession with telephone numbers.
	First of all, not everyone has telephone service.
	Second, not everyone that <strong>*does*</strong> have telephone service wants to give out their telephone number, for one reason or another.
	Some of us have obtuse reasons such as not feeling that it is respectful to ask that we identify as a number, while others simply do not want to deal with telemarketers or even voice calls in general.
</p>
<p>
	Professor Shyguy did not make his original deadline of releasing <a href="https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com/album/fragmentation">Fragmentation</a> today, as he said that he might not.
	He has now moved the deadline to the fifth of this month.
</p>
<p>
	I applied for work at a local meat shop.
	I must really be desperate.
	If hired, I will be required to sell corpse flesh all day and act happy about it.
	That does not seem like my idea of fun.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
END
);