this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
277 points (93.7% liked)

AssholeDesign

7672 readers
2 users here now

This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
277
'"Walmartwifi" isn't compatible with iCloud Private Relay' | Store demands privacy sacrifice to use internet in their cavernous dead zone of a building (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
56 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This is after forcing login to a store account:

At least they don’t hide in their ToS that:

“l agree to let Walmart monitor my use of Walmart WiFi, including to:

  • Determine my presence in Walmart stores
  • Associate information about me with my Walmart account
  • Improve products and services
  • Gather market insights about my in-store purchases and activities”

But that’s not enough, they need to monitor your internet activity further too.

For further reading, some greatest hits (the section headers on Wiki’s Criticism of Walmart):

  • Local communities
  • Allegations of predatory pricing and supplier issues
  • Labor relations
  • Poorly run and understaffed stores
  • No AEDs in stores (automated external defibrillators)
  • Imports and globalization
  • Product selection
  • Taxes
  • Animal welfare
  • Midtown Walmart
  • Opioids settlement
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago

LOL, "your communication cannot go through our service that we can monitor, so somebody else might be spying on you, black is white, war is peace, freedom is slavery"

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago

Start giving their store one star reviews and mention this

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Please just don’t use public WiFi and if you do, assume that your privacy and security are at risk.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Or use a vpn if you really must. I’ve noticed that most Walmarts have really bad cellular connectivity and this is probably the reason why

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I noticed that also. I would never connect to Walmart's wifi unless it was some kind of communication emergency.

So I just don't use my phone in Walmart and that's fine. Human beings don't require a data feed to survive.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Human beings don't require a data feed to survive.

The hell I don't. I am NOT putting up with reality for that long, ESPECIALLY in a Walmart.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I'm not sure Walmart counts as reality.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

They have bad cell signal because it's a giant steel box, big box stores are basically big shitty Faraday cages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Instead of offering WiFi why don’t they just set up LTE/5G in store? I once complained to my carrier about terrible reception and they sent me a magic box that takes cellular data, puts it in a VPN tunnel back to the carrier and goes on from there.

I thought these things were pretty normal, or am I missing something?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that you don’t get LTE/5G reception in the store from your phone, so why would a box that does the same thing solve the problem?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The box routes the traffic over the Internet typically via Ethernet. The magic box opens a VPN tunnel to the carrier where the traffic is handled the same way it would be if you were using “real” LTE/5G.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That would be good for the customer. I think the whole point of it is to monitor customer traffic, so even if it’s a better solution, I doubt they would do it lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Saaaaaaaame though

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I don't understand why you would need wifi in a supermarket. What are you doing while shopping that mobile data can't handle?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Large warehouse type buildings make getting a signal difficult ESPECIALLY in a walmart. I prefer using the app to find items I wouldn't otherwise know where to look.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I didn't consider those absurdly large US malls, my bad.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I use it to pull up a recipe that I’m cooking, If I need to double check a detail. Usually, I have everything on a physical list for practicality.

The issue is large warehouses, like Walmart or Costco or whatever often have bad cell reception, so you might need wifi to reach the internet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I primarily use it to look up locations of grocery items.

When I’m looking for a niche item, it’s so much faster to find it in the app than to wonder the store figuring out where it is

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Oh this gives me good reason to find a Walmart. I would love to see how it handles VPNs and it would be a fun game to set up a travel router that can obfuscate the VPN tunnel if needed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Using OpenVPN or Wireguard should work because they typically use port 443, which you can't block without killing the internet connection altogether.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Wireguard uses UDP which you definitely can block without breaking HTTPS (just QUIC aka HTTP/3). And its default is port 51820, I believe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

You read my mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I use the websocket tunnel connection mode in Windscribe for those networks that block VPNs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Wouldn’t UDP on port 443 still be weird though? I can’t remember whether QUIC and modern HTTP servers serve UDP on that port.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

If you use tcp

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I use a VPN just fine inside a Walmart. It's annoying you need a Walmart account now to use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Did I hear evil twin in your plans

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Murrica lmao

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Offering open wifi for the public is a terrifying thought.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Just set up a cheap squid proxy or an http proxy. They often still work

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A wire guard peer would probably be better

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Their ToS requirements don't appear to require traffic sniffing, so a tunnel won't save you. Wi-Fi is a digital signal after all

Tunnel is def a good idea though

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Wireguard tunnels encrypt traffic, and you can add a pre shared key for additional security, no?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Looks to me like you just needed to get through the captive portal and could have turned it back on immediately after.

load more comments
view more: next ›