May 2022 archive

Just in case all of one person wants a follow up.

In case anyone is following what I wrote about in my last post, Tumblr continues to interact with people online under the guise of selling itself as a “fandom-friendly” blogging site (this could be one of the furthest things in the world given that the security of their site is awful, that doxxing happens on their website, that they are aware that the doxxing happens, and they take absolutely no corrective action against it even when it happens to minors). I continue to be glad that Tumblr is one less thing that I have to check or update in the morning, although I think the majority of people that I followed and were friends with on it had probably caught onto the fact that I wasn’t substantially participating on anything that had to do with the site for like… the longest time bar the very, very occasional one-off. I prefer the sites that I use to have more substantial security, for one thing. And it’s becoming a little bit of a joke amongst my friends at this point.

I’m also a lot more comfortable not actively using a site whose data can effortlessly be leaked.

This is absolutely appalling website behavior.

For several days, I have been attempting to let a large blogging website know that I have become aware of exploitation through their site’s back end — namely, that it is possible, and apparently pretty easy for someone with the right amount of knowledge and fortitude to access information that one would at least think they should not be able to access. I have made reports to the blog site in question (okay, it’s Tumblr) about this, going into enough detail about the process as I’ve heard about it to hope that Tumblr would take the security of their site seriously enough to at least get back to me thanking me for letting them know about this and doing something, anything to fix it. As I’m sure a lot of you can probably already tell by the fact that this post is even being written, this is as far from the case as can possibly be. For multiple reasons, I no longer have an account on Tumblr. I did at one point, and I had for a long time, but I decided that for many reasons it was no longer worth the risk or even the time taken each morning to reblog one or two things pertinent to passing interests that I did not and do not talk about with any of the people that I know offline.

Anyway, Tumblr has “responded” to maybe a third of the reports that I have sent them total about more than one situation, sending me copied and pasted responses claiming that they will look into what I have reported to them… but not actually bothering to look into, or do anything about, any of it. At this point we are on day four of this being a known problem, although I’m beginning to wonder how long it’s been a problem for them on the back end of their website’s security (none of this is or will ever be my specialty, though). I think that if Tumblr cares so little about the integrity, safety, and security of their site to begin with that it should no longer be something that I concern myself over or with, and it’s not going to be something that I use in the future or let my children use. I think we would be better off using LiveJournal even though it is currently owned by Russia, because at least it is secure enough for me to feel safe writing about our daily lives in entries made to varying filters pre-programmed into the account that I’ve had there on it for years.

Good news, everyone! I ordered the Steam Deck!

I finally found a Steam Deck whose price wasn’t absolutely prohibitive given that these things sell out worse than the PlayStation 5, and I ordered it for Bub’s birthday! He’s going to love this! When it comes to the house, I’m going to load up all of the Steam games he already owns onto it and then hold onto it until his birthday when I will then give it to him. He already knows that I’m getting it for him though (that was actually how I figured out that he wanted one, or would like to have one all to himself… sort of like the rest of the mobile gaming consoles that are here in this house). Once it actually gets to this house I’ll make it a formal tag on this blog as I’m loading it up. I’m sure that process alone will take some time, even if I got Bub a 1TB microSD card to go into the microSD slot that these things come with to maximize the amount of space that he has available. I figured to go hard, then go home getting him the one with the most space.

Thinking about getting the kid a Steam Deck.

I have some credit through a line on PayPal, and for some reason using less than 10% of it and paying that off in full when my statements hit caused my credit score to lower a bit from what it had been… so I’m like, hey, if “they” (the arbiters of credit scores since this appears to be a uniquely American thing) want me to prove that I can handle a little bit of self-made debt by paying something like this off every month until it is paid off, there is that as an alternative. So I am considering that. Bub has already made it clear that he would love to have a Steam Deck, and they have a microSD card slot that I could easily add more space to by popping a 1TB card in. I could also pay it off with the child support that his father’s family has voluntarily paid since 2019. The order has, barring some brief periods where the “chief ombudsman” of the child support office has forced it to remain open in spite of there being approved good cause waivers on it (and her name’s Stephanie Neely, by the way), been in non-enforcement since it was declared unsafe to enforce.

Anyway, this thing is about as difficult to find and purchase as a PlayStation 5, so wish me luck, y’all!

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