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TIL you can get much better online prices using a public library computer (feddit.online)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/til@lemmy.world
66 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

TIL that you can get much lower online prices if you use a local library computer. Another reason to hate retailers.

Lora Kelley took a trip to the New York Public Library for us and compared prices against a personal iPhone. The results? A box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and a pack of toilet paper were nearly 20% cheaper on the library desktop.

https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-personal/surveillance-dynamic-pricing-legal-groceries-tickets/

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[–] 126 points 3 months ago (17 children)

Clear your cookies people

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  • [–] 97 points 3 months ago (14 children)

    That doesn’t help anymore. These days they use device identifiers and IP addresses and all kinds of stuff like that to see if you’re the same person or not. I would imagine that in this case going to your own laptop or desktop would result in the same prices.

    If you really want to hide try a browser like the Mullvad browser that specifically resizes and changes things used for fingerprinting.

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  • [–] 62 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Device finger printing should be illegal.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (9 children)
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  • [–] 39 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Then choose a different one that does the same kind of fingerprinting protection, that’s why I said like Mullvad.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Heard good things about ivpn and am looking at them for my new one as my sub is running out shortly.

    Funny that vpns are banned here.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    That's simplifying things to the point of being useless. Seriously, can't we have just a bit of nuance?

    There are legit, actual neo-nazis out there. I don't have much sympathy for Daniel Berntsson, and he clearly has some shitty ideas and positions, but calling Mullvad browser a "Nazi supporting browser" because Mullvad's rich co-founder made a donation without telling the company is just conflating everything into a big muddy thought soup.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    Linux's inventor said that AI coding tools are fine and helpful. Those tools are made by openai and the likes, which are run by some of the worst people in history, many of which are fascist supporters. Therefore, using that same logic, Linux is a fascist os that should be abolished.

    -_- Seriously. I wish people would use their own brains to think critically and logically through these paths, and stop echoing into the chamber.

    Edit.
    Mulvad is not a fascist company or product just because a co-founder used his own money for fascist things.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    It's hard to say, but they do call for ethnic cleansing or "remigration" of citizens. That means concentration camps. What the US is doing now but worse. They also have socialist policies. So by combining nationalist and socialist (populist) policies, they are kinda reinventing Nazism. They are a serious threat.

    It really is fucking sad because they were allies in the war against privacy, but you have to draw the line at ethnic cleansing.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    You're missing the point, library computers are used by a lot of poor people so those computers have cookies and other fingerprinting that makes companies think the users of those machines can't afford normal prices so they get even lower prices than if you had completely cleared your chace cookies fresh device and all that.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Aren’t you usually signed in to an account on a service where you order things? Like Amazon or instacart? I assume they don’t care if I’m at home or at the library? I’m still the same person.

    Or are these people ordering their cinnamon apple Cheerios from random online retailers where they don’t maintain an account and have to put in all of their card and address details every time? And even then I assume they track you by your card and delivery address, which I assume is not the library address.

    Maybe you could get a separate credit card, bill it to a PO Box, clear your cookies, go to the library to do your shopping, ship the cereal to an abandoned house or vacant lot in a bad neighborhood, and save 20% on your apple cinnamon Cheerios.

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    • [–] 19 points 3 months ago

    This is why I have a botnet of poor people's computers

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    [–] 18 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    Is it possible to instruct the browser, via extensions or something, to simply withhold that kind of information? I know websites need to render the page differently for different browsers and OS, but when it comes to things involving payment I'd rather deal with the browser quirks than get ripped off.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    Yes, but then that itself becomes a signal.

    You have to not only resist fingerprinting, but do it in the same way as other people who resist fingerprinting.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Use tor browser or librewolf with a vpn that isnt owned by Kape. Check to make sure all cookies are deleted each session. Make each purchase with a new account. Ideally using an email alias otherwise it gets cumbersome fast. Personally I also use a one time virtual debit card.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

    Oh yea! I'll just use tor! I fucking love only getting 10% of my network speed and having 70% of websites be an unfunctionable mess! Totally a valid and reasonable workaround!

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    ... then enable JavaScript? And this was to avoid price manipulation, not day to day use?

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  • [–] -4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Dumbass comment. JS can easily reveal your IP and identity.

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    • [–] 11 points 3 months ago

    You guys are mostly missing the point, the library computers get cheaper prices than even a freshly installed no fingerprint computer because lots of poor people use them.

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    [–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Pretty sure that’s illegal where I live.

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    • [–] 41 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    It's not the library, it's the cache you never clear. She could have done this just as easily at home on a browser with a private window she hadn't signed into.

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  • [–] 38 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    With the same IP, CPU, GPU, and networkcard??

    Easily fingerprintable

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Easily obfuscated, but also just clearing cache or using private browsing will more likely than not work.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I tried using waterfox and librewolf i think.

    Every click on a new site was 5 capchas, its horrendously unusable, since probably they assume that all obfuscated user agent and other data are bots

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I tried LibreWolf. It was such a bad experience.

    It's a shame that the Internet is so bad that the browser has to go to such extreme lengths to give you any privacy that it makes the experience awful.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    It definitely isn't as graceful in the every day experience, but keeping a profile with resist fingerprinting disabled has helped the few times I need to get past turnstiles and whatnot that otherwise loop

    It really is a shame that it's come to this rock paper scissors war between the server's usage, the user's experience, and privacy. Currently privacy is what has been cut in favor of the other two. You have to work to maintain privacy now

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Unless you're running a virtual GPU (and changing it often enough to remain anonymous), tracking pixels are pretty difficult to obfuscate (the exact thermal environment your PC is in will even effect timing).

    And thanks to big tech this state of the art tracking is on essentially every website.

    Clearing site data/private mode is a way to ask nicely that websites don't track you, but user intention hasn't been respected for around 3 decades by now.

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    • [–] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

    Clear your cookies and use a VPN. (And your browser probably has a setting you can enable to clear your cookies automatically every time you close out.)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    Rtfa

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    • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    All the more reason to use a VPN.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    If I were a company looking to optimize profit by pricing goods at whatever limit the targeted consumer demographic would be willing to pay for, I would use a VPN as a signal to raise the price.

    It doesn't matter who that consumer is behind the VPN. The VPN itself is a monthly subscription, and that indicates he/she has at enough disposable income to afford non-essential services.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    To that point the library computer is free. I don’t know anything about VPNs or how to use them and I definitely shouldn’t have to pay for something for basic privacy. Library users improve the demand for libraries. Using a library computer is a win in basically all ways that really matter.

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    • [+] 10 points 3 months ago (8 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    Amazon does for sure.

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  • [+] 1 point 3 months ago (6 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    You're right. It is testable and provable, which is how I know they do lol

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  • [+] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Not sure what to tell you. It literally happened to me yesterday.

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    • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    go to https://www.bonappetit.com/ and watch the price suddenly jump!

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bonappetit.com conde.digital * block
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bonappetit.com google.com * block
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    goddamnit. all i wanted was a muffin !
    why are you counting my pockets so aggressively ?

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    [+] -15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Hmm. I've never seen a difference between online prices and the price on the shelf at the store.

    Are the prices lower than what is on the shelf?

    Maybe this is something to do with New York. I doubt it's true anywhere else. Maybe other big cities.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    I find this hard to believe as well. There is very little information given and it seems more likely they accidentally shopped at two different targets. I've heard the same claim about plane tickets, also mentioned in the article, and have never experienced it as well. Though there is a lot more evidence to back that claim up.

    My comparisons have been between my work laptop and my personal computer. Two completely different machines, different IP addresses and vastly different habits on those machines. I never even log into my accounts on my work machine.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    Online is usually cheaper for a lot of goods. Two days ago, I wanted to get a physical copy of an older game that is getting harder to find. It was way more expensive buying from a physical store, so I searched for it online. The price difference for the exact same product between searching in my PC's browser and through my phone was about $8.

    My phone tracks my habits more easily, so I think they assumed I'd be more likely to buy from more expensive sellers if they just withheld showing me the cheaper ones. I could see the same more expensive options on my PC, but nothing below a certain price point on my phone. In a physical store, they're only able to advertise one price. But online, when there can be multiple origin points for a product in a single market, they can simply withhold showing you some of them.

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