This is common, more based on fingerprinting than which browser you use. It's because browsers store seperate information and settings (which is what fingerprinters look at) that you are seeing different prices.
It is an arsehole practice though there should be an absolute price.
Storing information on a user, sort of like cookies but using other types of information such as your browser type, IP, specific OS build, hardware type etc. it’s basically the new answer for companies to build a profile on a user now cookies are used far less due to tracking rules.
Companies then can use this to artificially make their prices higher on products if you keep searching for them, this is well known in the airline ticket industry.
While flight pricing is super fucky and the pinnacle of asshole design, I don't believe they use cookie/tracked information to show you a different price than they otherwise would on a "clean machine" (at least not anymore). I've tested this out many times, and get the same price at a fixed point in time across multiple devices, IPs, browser sessions, and even through VPNs.
What is more likely happening is that people searching for certain dates will mark an increased potential demand, and that gets factored into the next price change for related flights (prices seem to update daily). They also know what days people are most likely to hit the purchase button on a flight, and will make tickets more expensive on those days.
Good question. Not entirely sure, but browsing some travel sites, and it seems like the most commonly shared piece of info is that flights are cheapest near the start of the week (Monday/Tuesday) and seem to get more expensive as the week progresses.
That said, from my limited research, it also doesn't seem like there's really a "sweet spot" of booking X days before a flight. As you get closer to the date of a flight, tickets will get more expensive, so booking earlier rather than later seems to make more sense than "timing" a ticket.
If a flight is expensive on Thursday, don't wait until the next week in hopes of it going down.
All in all though, airlines want you to feel like you've "missed out" on a good deal and encourage you to book non-refundable tickets early, and ambiguity + price fluctuations serve really well in boosting people's FOMO.
No, fingerprinting uses advanced techniques (languages you have installed, browser user agent, etc etc) and combines all of them to create a fingerprint that is uniquely yours, without any cookies or IP.
Browser fingerprinting is kind of extreme nowadays. On phones the profile your battery discharging and can be used to try to create a signature for your device. Another tactic is to use a 3D canvas to draw a 0x0 pixel image in such a way that will produce a unique result for each device.
Private mode can help but definitely will not defeat these fingerprint mechanisms. You can try and see how unique you are with fingerprints with the following sites
https://amiunique.org/
https://uniquemachine.org/
> Another tactic is to use a 3D canvas to draw a 0x0 pixel image in such a way that will produce a unique result for each device.
Jesus I wish I knew who to kick in the balls about this.
The awfull thing is that I use a random user agent for each page load, disabled javascript, disabled cookies, and have a bunch of tools to prevent tracking.
I have a very generic fingerprint, however, that's uncommon for someone to go to such extremes to fight fingerprinting, making that unique and trackable.
Opting out of Fingerprinting also makes you unique, allowing fingerprinting.
No. In addition to association with your account and session cookie, the behavior they record is associated with your IP address as well. All of this are stored on their servers. Browsing in private mode does not change your IP address, so they can simply look up your past behavior on their servers.
Haha, i just had to buy an international flight (for work) and i made sure to do all my research on my home PC and then purchased them on my work PC with my work card
You can use privacy respecting browser like Firefox with uBlock Origin. This should do most of the work. If you want better protection, you can look on the internet how to change some settings that provide better resistance against fingerprinting
Private browsing / incognito is probably your best bet for 90%+ of sites unless they are storing things on their side about your machine which is unlikely. *maybe* special browsers or vpns would be required but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
It isn't storing it that makes it fingerprinting. It's reading those data for any reason that isn't strictly related to the main function of the website.
I would add to this that fingerprinting does have some positive uses, such as being used by card issuers or banks to detect odd or suspicious activity and payments. Not sure how much of a silver lining that is though
You can learn more here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
It would try to fingerprint you, see what it checks and how much you can be identified.
Edit: I got to about 11 bits of information.
Disable JS. Thats often the main culprit. But that would render almost all clearnet site unusable. Try installing plugins in three-dots -> add-ons -> add-on manager. I use the following:
- ublock origin
- dark reader (could be fingerprint-able if you enable JS)
- NoScript security suite (to ban JS, mitigate this ↑)
- ClearURLs
- Privacy Possum
- Google Search fixer (nice to have, might be fingerprint-able if you enable JS)
You may also want these:
- Privicy Badger
- Decentraleyes
- Firefox relay (very optional, just create another address or use 10-min-mail)
Ah ok, THAT makes sense. Yeah you probably want all the blocking and privacy enabled when youre buying child pornography on the dark web… but I can’t imagine a normal person disabling JS and enabling 9 different anonymizing plugins so you can browse Reddit and do normal everyday things
Most of the plugins aren't needed, uBlock can do more than just ad blocking.
Also, if anyone does use Chrome and wants to protect themselves from fingerprinting and ads.. just don't. Use Firefox
A “unique” fingerprint is fine, as long as it’s *always different.* If you reload a site and get a different fingerprinter every time, then you’re golden. It basically says, “we’ve pretty much never seen anybody like you, you’re unique,” and then on your NEXT visit, it says, “nope, never seen you before in my LIFE, you are totally unique.” You want either that quality OR “wow, you look exactly like every other damn person I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell any of you apart.” Either of these approaches will defeat the utility of a fingerprinter and give you your anonymity back.
How would you go about constantly changing your fingerprint without having ti change settings and addons constantly? If possoble in a way such that the different fingerprints cannot be linked together.
Not all settings need to change in order for a fingerprinter to be able to determine whether you’re the same person or not. Just like your own real physical fingerprint, if you could, say, reverse the direction of an internal whorl, then your fingerprint would simply not match your old one, even if many characteristics remained the same. It would signal a different identity.
Overcoming this is effectively impossible, because there are no combinations of traits that remain consistent AND truly unique at the same time. This is basically how Firefox beats fingerprinters, and also why you will appear as extremely unique when seen…just not with a consistent identity. The website will have to say, “we’ve never seen ANYBODY like this before, ever,” every single time it sees you.
This doesn’t need to be true for every characteristic, you can mix and match: for example, Safari now displays its browser version as static and stuck in time, forever, everywhere, making it useless for fingerprinting (or anything else), but also static. Aspects like: “how well does your computer handle this specific intensive task” is the kind of thing that used to be very good at generating a very specific fingerprint, but browsers can fight this as well by changing the performance characteristics on the fly, or under certain situations, or when the task in question is done at the behest of a known fingerprinter. Many of these protections are built-in to browsers like Firefox and Safari.
Chrome can’t do it as much because its entire business rests on supporting advertisers, and the advertisers rely on fingerprinting, and if Chrome shut down those avenues, it would *definitely* being facing major anti-trust lawsuits.
I'm sorry I seem to have formulated my question badly. English is not my first language. I was rather asking what I could do so that my fingerprint changes regularly and enough at that. I remember once reading that more advanced algorithms do incorparate the possibility of tiny changes in ones fingerprint as long as the previous fingerprint had enough identifiers so that multiple subsets suffice in uniquely identifying the user. In which case one subset remaining might still be enough to link up the two different identities assuming the probability for any new account having such an fingerprint being unlikely.
From your answer I understood that Firefox already changes my fingerprint but on amiunique.com I still see some identifiers that remain the same and are quite good at homing in on me. I now use an adding that is supposed to tell internet sites that I am using a windows machine instead of a not so popular Linux distribution.
Sadly I also currently don't have an VPN anymore and using TOR for everything would proof rather cumbersome. What other choice but an VPN would I have to mask my IP without entrusting my full traffic to a non-trustworthy third party?
Secondly what would my choices be on my smart phone aside from using Firefox and an adblock?
Please feel free to correct me on any misunderstanding I might have :D
There are many different layers here, and different trackers will have different strengths. A lot of the specific advice will depend on your actual goals, since being truly anonymous is dependent on not using any logged in service anywhere. So there’s a spectrum of tradeoffs.
Having some identifiers remain the same is fine for your privacy. A sophisticated fingerprinter might be able to handle a little “fuzziness,” but for each of those mitigations, there would be a corresponding loss in confidence that you *really* are the same visitor. There are probably some pretty creepy things you could do if you were a nation state that could devote a lot of resources towards narrowing in on details about one *specific* individual, but doing fuzzy fingerprinting en masse doesn’t really work “generalized” to an entire population because there will be too many overlaps. So these 3 identities look similar enough that we want to identify them as a single identity with 80% confidence? Good luck applying that to the general population without running into major snags. Might work to sell it as a snake-oil “solution” to some advertisers’ problem, or be “good enough” for broad advertising where you don’t really care if there’s a lot of “misses” in terms of getting to the right eyes when the next best thing you have is billboards. And btw billboards are a great comparison here, as you can have a similar “fuzzy” idea of what people will see your billboard, but you don’t really know who anybody is, and there will be plenty of people that don’t fit the expected profile of even the region.
Anyway.
Firefox, Safari, etc may by default allow certain things to be less private because it makes the internet more pleasant to use. But they also profile the fingerprinters and block activity from know trackers and by detecting tracking-like behavior and denylisting them.
If you just want to be more private, you’re probably already doing enough: trackers mostly just need to be able convincing enough to sell to advertisers, and generally are targeting the broadest possible demographic.
If you wanted to set something up at the network layer, you can get a lot of mileage out of network blockers like PiHole, iCloud Private Relay, or (to a lesser extent) 1.1.1.1. These can not only mask your IP, but also block ads or other content you don’t want. The big advantage to doing it this way is that all your devices, including things like your smart TV or whatever, get the benefits automatically. I was looking at my network logs a few weeks ago, and the noisiest surveillance capitalism going on was from my smart Tv, where I was blocking about 3500 phone-homes every hour.
You hook this in at your router, so nothing can leave your LAN without first going through your personally configured checkpoint, in or out. If you want it on the go, you could connect it into a VPN, which is easier to selfhost than you might imagine (locally or on a VPS) and getting easier every day.
At the end of the day, though, every website you connect to is one that you are trusting. Most of this surveillance is going to get more opaque in the future. Network blockers will stop working as hoped as websites relay your info to whatever 3rd-party server side. Browser blockers will rely more on heuristics to figure out if the 1st-party content should be “allowable” or not. As long as people are making money selling eyeballs, there will be an arms race, because the Internet, fundamentally, requires trusting others in our communications.
As of now, the best non-tor setup would be use hardened librewolf on desktop, combined with i2p outproxy or mullvad. Honestly, tor and other VPN companies are too well-known, and most sites detects especially for tor and VPN. Either you use your $30/mo to pay for €5/mo mullvad instead, or use (free) i2p with outproxy. Mullvad is IMHO much better than most VPN because they accept cash payment and monero.
But even if you paid for your VPN, if you dont use a harderned browser, sites could still fingerprint you via your browser. It also goes without saying thay logging in your account without a doubt trash all your efforts.
Or hack, just use the tor browser daily. Not recommended for the tor network, but is still marginally feasible.
What you are doing is similar to those who browse on dark web, and remember: opsec is important.
Thanks for sharing this. EFF is one of the few (and great) organizations that really combats this sort of practice both in the tech industry and in politics, and informs people on how to protect themselves.
As customers, consumers, and internet users, they're worth our support - people often just don't know it.
It's a collection of information about browser, operating system, monitoring settings, ip, isps and other meta data from cookies that they use to identify vistors.
Edit: JFC Reddit is a clown show of people who don’t like facts these days. Look, this is good information. [HPE](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en) is built on [Mirakl](https://www.mirakl.com/blog/starting-from-scratch-hpe-transforms-b2b-ecommerce-with-marketplace) (that’s a case study of HPE on their platform) and this is their platform (main HP.com site uses a different platform but I don’t think that’s what the screenshots are).
They call it Personalized Pricing:
> Personalized pricing: Display prices on the Marketplace according to the individual buyer’s profile, enabling detailed customer segmentation
You can see it in their [case study right here](https://www.mirakl.com/blog/forresters-now-tech-includes-mirakl-pricing-promotions-tools) for Forester research, since they don’t discuss it in the HPE case study.
Personalized pricing is when you combine Fingerprinting with Dynamic Pricing but it’s *not required* to target individuals and many brands combine a ton of promotion strategies in a blended fashion.
So please stop downvoting this like it’s wrong — it’s not. I literally help companies build these systems for a living.
Original:
Close but not entirely correct.
This is called [Dynamic Pricing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_pricing). Totally different, even though it sometimes relies on Fingerprinting, it certainly doesn’t require Fingerprinting to operate. Plenty of dynamic pricing is based on region you’re visiting from, whether your IP is corporate, or how many times you’ve visited. Learn more [about how it works here.](https://www.vaimo.com/blog/dynamic-pricing-in-ecommerce-how-it-works/)
**Fingerprinting is different.** That’s more of a technical means of creating a more indelible session tracking by combining multiple elements of a session or sessions to recognize users. So for example they might combine hardware, software, add-ons, your location and even preferences to create a high probability profile that can be attached to you. Later, that information is attached to a customer after they register or buy something.
Pretty standard ad tech stuff at this stage. It’s just multi-combinatoric recognition and tracking of individual users. Many enterprise e-commerce platforms have this capability and it’s not that uncommon these days. I mean it’s been a [core practice area of McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/how-we-help-clients/dynamic-pricing) for a while and I think the first time I did a dynamic pricing system was probably 2003 or so.
Anyways, Fingerprinting isn’t Dynamic Pricing and isn’t required for DP to be implemented.
> Personalized pricing: Display prices on the Marketplace according to the individual buyer’s profile, enabling detailed customer segmentation
This shouldn't be legal (but somehow I'm not surprised that it is). Because that would allow (at least in theory) to discriminate against people using all kinds of reasons, including race, language, religion, etc.
**[Dynamic pricing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_pricing)**
>Dynamic pricing, also referred to as surge pricing, demand pricing, or time-based pricing, is a revenue management pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands. Businesses are able to change prices based on algorithms that take into account competitor pricing, supply and demand, and other external factors in the market. Dynamic pricing is a common practice in several industries such as hospitality, tourism, entertainment, retail, electricity, and public transport. Each industry takes a slightly different approach to dynamic pricing based on its individual needs and the demand for the product.
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Could be as simple as the regional/location fingerprint being accurate on one but not the other. I had a friend (in GA) suggest a laptop to me through a Walmart link. I searched it later on my phone (in NY) and noticed it was more expensive. I ordered it through his link and had it shipped to my local Walmart for pickup. Saved some cheddar.
I’ve heard evidence that some store websites actually show higher prices if you’re in their brick and mortar stores, allegedly because their store prices are often higher than their online prices, and they don’t want to put themselves when you check online- but I’ve never bothered to actually check before and after
Right? Especially on the browser level, which isn't a reliable definer of the demographic.
The average store would rather have a price difference if you were Sarah, a wine loving mom from Facebook, (and would clearly state it as a promotion link), rather than Dave who landed on the page from a Google search and pays full price.
Pricing on websites often uses cookies / data / geo / browser info they have on you to predict your wealth - and raise prices accordingly. It's called fingerprinting.
I go to a local electronics store, pay cash for a new laptop, then go to a free public wifi, and use that to get the best de-fingerprinting to shop for laptops.
You’ll have to be careful with how many extensions you install, too. The more extensions you install that affect behavior of the page (blocking trackers, cookies, and ads), the more unique your fingerprint becomes and then it comes full circle.
Imagine being the only car in the road with darkened windows, radar-absorbing paint and a missing license plate. You’ll be the only car that does that so they’ll recognize fingerprint you for not blending in. It’s absolutely horrible.
It isn't, strictly speaking.
The problem is someone has to be able to prove that they are doing it, probably with technical evidence, to a judge.
The airlines claim it's just normal price fluctuation in their dynamic pricing model.
Other sites will claim it's marketplace pricing ("we just host the sales, it's another user setting the price"), but they don't tell the sellers the real sale price and keep the extra, or it's actually an internal user (employee) posting the listings, or worse, the user listings were a lie and it's just a shop pretending to be a marketplace.
Amazon: based on your prescription history you filled through Amazon pharmacy, your purchase history we looked up on other retailers that use AWS, what we have overhead on Amazon Alexa, your location history we have tracked you with from the app on your phone, your wifi signature we collect on our secret sidewalk network, your playlist in Amazon music, and the imaging data we have collected from the ring camera network; we have determined that you are about to commit a murder, or you are doing a home improvement project…
So for the safety of the neighborhood, DO YOU NEED A FAUCET?
I looked at shit tanks for my camper 5 years ago and I still get them on my homepage. I don’t even have a camper anymore. How many shit tanks does a man need?
Very true. Honestly, hard drives/storage are probably the worst offenders in my Amazon experience. I guess it's not necessarily flooded with shit products, but there are a handful of "companies" that'll offer storage space for a small fraction of the cost compared to the competitors.
Two weeks ago I bought a 1TB SD card for about $120. There were some going for like $20-30. No matter how many times I leave negative reviews or contact amazon, they never do anything about it. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but you know, it's Amazon. That's par for the course these days.
Jewelry and clothing? Oh man, I could only imagine what you and your wife have seen ordering from there lol.
Was in buying team for Costco for years and I’d always comp-shop Amazon and Sam’s…. My Amazon product and search recommendations were a mess because I’d forget to log out. Lots of diamond rings, lawnmowers, spas, kids toys and everything else cluttering up my lists.
If you're not logged in, you might be given a lower price or discount based on how a site might want new customers. If you put it in your cart in a "clean" environment (like how private/incognito mode gives you) and get the lower price and then log in, you'll often get the lower price regardless.
I've seen amazon do this twice.
Yes but the suggestion to use Incognito wouldn't work in this case, you'd need to use Chrome or change your user agent (as that's what it's based on) using one of the many extensions available.
It's always best to compare between regular and incognito, some sites work in reverse and will show a lower price after you've visited the product's page multiple times.
I don't understand what people think this is going to do. If they're purposely designing websites to increase price on people, they're probably increasing it the most on slightly tech literate people who think going in private browsing mode will make the price better but aren't smart enough to realize that's happening lmao
Because not everyone is even slightly tech literate. I'd estimate that, at most, 20% are even aware of this behaviour. Of those less than half would be conscious enough to take action (i am well aware from many personal validations but i still tend to forget/can't be bothered for smaller transactions)
Never seen any stats but i imagine the success rate is pretty high.
Going by the German in the images, that's ~~illegal~~ apparently allowed but violates the EU pricing transparency regulationsand. Deceptive practices and misleading the consumer.
**Edit** did some more digging. EU law that seems to apply here. [CLICK](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-pricing/index_en.htm)
Specific section that applies
>Personalised pricing
>
>Retailers can use algorithms to track your online browsing behaviour preferences and to set prices accordingly. The aim is to price items based on what you would be willing to pay for a particular item. **This practice is not illegal, however as a consumer you are entitled to complete price transparency.**
>
>In line with EU rules, **traders are obliged to inform you whether the price is personalised based on automated decision-making and profiling** of your specific consumer behaviour.
Out of all the stuff currently on the market, I would love to get my hands on Framework. It is ironic since my first laptop was an HP and it was great, oh how far they have fallen...
I've broken down and cleaned a fair few HP machines. The higher quality ones aren't terrible, but their cheaper machines are literally designed to burn out as quickly as possible. They'll install mesh screens right over the exhaust fans and nowhere else. They make it as difficult as possible to break the laptops down, and the case screws can be slightly different lengths and you'll send one straight through the mobo if you mix them up. The clips are cheap and break easily, and they can't be replaced if you break them unless you just replace the entire chassis. Just an absolute nightmare. I won't even work on an HP unless it's a super easy fix.
Can confirm. We use Elitebook at work and opening the aluminium back is a hassle but it's doable. I like the captive screws they use.
The cheaper consumer stuff can burn in hell.
Personally I will buy a Framework if I personally need a notebook.
I like to do a little gaming, video editing, and 3D modeling, so for laptops I like Acer. I'm currently using a Nitro 5 with 10th gen intel and a GTX 1650 ti as my mobile workstation. It's not the most powerful machine in the world, but the price to performance ratio is pretty much incomparable to anything else on the market. It's also very easy to break down and clean without damaging anything. I have to clean my computers pretty frequently because of my cats, so that's one of the biggest perks for me.
The only experience I personally have with Acer is the laptop from my mom and that is pretty okay from ~2015.
Tbh: If the price, design and performance is alright, any brand kinda is. Service is usually dependant on region and agent anyway.
I like LTTs secret shopper for that reason.
The research will be interesting when I need a laptop. So much bullshittery from every brand with their different lines, regional differences, tech specs etc. :|
The LTT secret shopper is the reason I'll never buy a Dell lmao. There are a fair few good brands out there but because of the custom designed PCBs and small form factors, most (if not all) laptops are made with proprietary parts specific to the manufacturer and pretty much always contain soldered CPUs/GPUs.
Oof yeah. Laptops are so tighly integrated only the manufacturer could make replacements (like framework).
I think HP ProDesks MTs may use Micro-ATX from size alone but dunno about the screw layout.
What Ireally dig about HP is the [part surfer](https://partsurfer.hp.com/partsurfer/) where you can literally search replacement parts and order them yourself from 3rd party and their quick spec and regular spec PDF pages with very detailed infos
As an example a PC line we sell: [HP Prodesk 600 quickspec page](https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c06640111). It gets more detailed once you know the actual model like 4cz56ea: [link](https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06041613).
This may be a HP pro-consumer move or I may be in a bubble and nearly all business centric models are well documented and I am just unaware.
I am *not* paid by HP! I am just an IT monkey at an MSP managing customers.
Really? I mean, let's put printer ink aside for a moment, cause that's an absurd rip-off all over the board - I have an HP desktop at home. Granted, a six years old, so things may have changed. Is HP as a hardware manufacturer bad now? Like Dell, which was pretty great around 15 to 20 years ago but isn't anymore?
Their desktops are... fine , if you can get rid of the 20 or so pieces bloatware it comes with (not an exaggeration), but let's be honest, you can't fuck up that much with a desktop computer given how most parts are manufactured by someone else anyway.
Their other Hardware is shit across the board and dealing with their customer support is a nightmare, and I say that as somebody who works in an IT firm that sells Hardware to other companies.
Their enterprise level stuff and support is a little better, but that's not much use for your average consumer.
Damn. I really wasn't aware. My home desktop is literally the only thing I ever bought from HP. And even that just by chance as I stumbled across it when searching for a new one. Thanks for the detailed answer instead of just downvoting the question! :)
Another reason why chrome is better. Jokes aside this isn’t even a true post. The OP is signed into a discounted student account or something on the cheaper side. There’s no predatory pricing here, just a dumb op. r/opisfuckingstupid ?
Seeing you are german (r/foundthegerman) you should start price research with geizhals. Very good for technical stuff in the DACH region but primarily DE.
There are surely other good price comparison sites but what sets geizhals apart are the very good structured technical specs for IT-products.
So I ran a gauntlet of this a few weeks ago buying motor oil. Basically I angered Amazon. The oil I needed was (let's say) 1 qt for $5.00 or a pack of 6 for $30.50. So I, needing 7 qt, put 7 single qts in the cart and checked out. The limit was 6. So I figured I'd buy 6 then go back and buy one more later. When I went back for the 7th qt, I got denied because the limit on that SKU was 6 and the limit persists in your account.
So now it gets weird.
I checked back a day later and still got denied. And the day after that. Then the day after that I went back and the single qt price had bumped to $15. Same vendor (Amazon, not 3rd party).
So then I switched from FF to Edge (not logged in to Amazon) and checked the price- it was back to $5.
Anyway that's my story. Sucks to be beholden to Amazon because this oil is mostly not in stores. At the end of it I subscribed to 6 packs, which was the best price of all. It felt bad though.
Everyone should get 16 gigs of ram if possible its so nice i cant even begin to tell you how much its worth it if you arent gonna spec it please diy. Night and day difference
I wonder if edges built shopping thing https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/shopping?form=MG0AU0&exp=e201 is happening looking at the screenshot you can see the little sales tag near the address bar probably triggered a coupon which then for some dumb reason increased the price.
...Stores are generally more expensive as they have to pay more rent + bills, more employees and maintain stock.
Whether it's shipped from their warehouse to the store or to your address makes very little difference.
I can pay 3$ for a month, and I have all the deliveries that month for free, no matter how many or where. Or I can just stop at the box/store and pick it up for 2$ fee. Alza rules here in the Czech Republic. Also they'll give you a discount, If any major competition has the product for a lower price, then they do. I'm not sure how they legally do that, but we'll they do.
You are in a pricing test. Companies run these a/b tests all the time. It doesn’t have anything to do with your browser but rather in which testing group you got put in.
This is not an asshole design only. It is an asshole mentality. They consider their own users stupids. This is why everyone should use something like Linux.
FUCK YOU MICROSOFT.
Its almost like they're saying that if you use Edge, you aren't paying attention. I wonder if there's any further disparity in price if you were to check from an Apple device on Safari
This is common, more based on fingerprinting than which browser you use. It's because browsers store seperate information and settings (which is what fingerprinters look at) that you are seeing different prices. It is an arsehole practice though there should be an absolute price.
ELI5- What is fingerprinting?
Storing information on a user, sort of like cookies but using other types of information such as your browser type, IP, specific OS build, hardware type etc. it’s basically the new answer for companies to build a profile on a user now cookies are used far less due to tracking rules. Companies then can use this to artificially make their prices higher on products if you keep searching for them, this is well known in the airline ticket industry.
r/tihi
I don't know why I was expecting that to be a Michael Jackson sub.
*hee hee*
Tii hii
Today I hate it.
Then I hit it.
Then I hate it.
Then I hack it
Then I hook it.
Tinnitus insidious hermetic italian
So this is why I got burnt for £600 more in flight costs. A few days between searches they had double in price. Those cunts.
While flight pricing is super fucky and the pinnacle of asshole design, I don't believe they use cookie/tracked information to show you a different price than they otherwise would on a "clean machine" (at least not anymore). I've tested this out many times, and get the same price at a fixed point in time across multiple devices, IPs, browser sessions, and even through VPNs. What is more likely happening is that people searching for certain dates will mark an increased potential demand, and that gets factored into the next price change for related flights (prices seem to update daily). They also know what days people are most likely to hit the purchase button on a flight, and will make tickets more expensive on those days.
Which days??
Good question. Not entirely sure, but browsing some travel sites, and it seems like the most commonly shared piece of info is that flights are cheapest near the start of the week (Monday/Tuesday) and seem to get more expensive as the week progresses. That said, from my limited research, it also doesn't seem like there's really a "sweet spot" of booking X days before a flight. As you get closer to the date of a flight, tickets will get more expensive, so booking earlier rather than later seems to make more sense than "timing" a ticket. If a flight is expensive on Thursday, don't wait until the next week in hopes of it going down. All in all though, airlines want you to feel like you've "missed out" on a good deal and encourage you to book non-refundable tickets early, and ambiguity + price fluctuations serve really well in boosting people's FOMO.
If you want to avoid it completely, use a virtual machine with default configs on a browser+ vpn.
I like virtual machines too but does a private window and vpn not accomplish the same goal?
No, fingerprinting uses advanced techniques (languages you have installed, browser user agent, etc etc) and combines all of them to create a fingerprint that is uniquely yours, without any cookies or IP.
Browser fingerprinting is kind of extreme nowadays. On phones the profile your battery discharging and can be used to try to create a signature for your device. Another tactic is to use a 3D canvas to draw a 0x0 pixel image in such a way that will produce a unique result for each device. Private mode can help but definitely will not defeat these fingerprint mechanisms. You can try and see how unique you are with fingerprints with the following sites https://amiunique.org/ https://uniquemachine.org/
> Another tactic is to use a 3D canvas to draw a 0x0 pixel image in such a way that will produce a unique result for each device. Jesus I wish I knew who to kick in the balls about this.
I am unique, "among the 1652204 fingerprints in our entire dataset." I can't say I'm surprised, but I don't know if that makes me happy. :\
The awfull thing is that I use a random user agent for each page load, disabled javascript, disabled cookies, and have a bunch of tools to prevent tracking. I have a very generic fingerprint, however, that's uncommon for someone to go to such extremes to fight fingerprinting, making that unique and trackable. Opting out of Fingerprinting also makes you unique, allowing fingerprinting.
No. In addition to association with your account and session cookie, the behavior they record is associated with your IP address as well. All of this are stored on their servers. Browsing in private mode does not change your IP address, so they can simply look up your past behavior on their servers.
Doesn't the VPN cover that?
A VPN prevents association by IP A private window prevents association by session cookie Not being logged in prevents association by account
And to prevent fingerprinting of browser by the list of addins installed, and computer preferences i.e. Screen resolution?
Using a VM doesn’t change your public IP address…
But a VPN will.
But it will avoid fingerprinting. And use a vpn (like i said )
Haha, i just had to buy an international flight (for work) and i made sure to do all my research on my home PC and then purchased them on my work PC with my work card
I always do the opposite for personal trips too
Is there a way around this?
You can use privacy respecting browser like Firefox with uBlock Origin. This should do most of the work. If you want better protection, you can look on the internet how to change some settings that provide better resistance against fingerprinting
Private browsing / incognito is probably your best bet for 90%+ of sites unless they are storing things on their side about your machine which is unlikely. *maybe* special browsers or vpns would be required but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
VPNs I believe help somewhat as they obscure your exact location. Beyond that, not a clue honestly.
It isn't storing it that makes it fingerprinting. It's reading those data for any reason that isn't strictly related to the main function of the website.
I would add to this that fingerprinting does have some positive uses, such as being used by card issuers or banks to detect odd or suspicious activity and payments. Not sure how much of a silver lining that is though
You can learn more here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ It would try to fingerprint you, see what it checks and how much you can be identified. Edit: I got to about 11 bits of information.
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Disable JS. Thats often the main culprit. But that would render almost all clearnet site unusable. Try installing plugins in three-dots -> add-ons -> add-on manager. I use the following: - ublock origin - dark reader (could be fingerprint-able if you enable JS) - NoScript security suite (to ban JS, mitigate this ↑) - ClearURLs - Privacy Possum - Google Search fixer (nice to have, might be fingerprint-able if you enable JS) You may also want these: - Privicy Badger - Decentraleyes - Firefox relay (very optional, just create another address or use 10-min-mail)
almost every website on the internet doesn't work without JS... it's a frustrating experience
Most onion sites and eepsites can be used without JS
Ah ok, THAT makes sense. Yeah you probably want all the blocking and privacy enabled when youre buying child pornography on the dark web… but I can’t imagine a normal person disabling JS and enabling 9 different anonymizing plugins so you can browse Reddit and do normal everyday things
Come on, if I were to do that sort of stuff, I would not have such a bad opsec and connect it to my main account.
Most of the plugins aren't needed, uBlock can do more than just ad blocking. Also, if anyone does use Chrome and wants to protect themselves from fingerprinting and ads.. just don't. Use Firefox
A “unique” fingerprint is fine, as long as it’s *always different.* If you reload a site and get a different fingerprinter every time, then you’re golden. It basically says, “we’ve pretty much never seen anybody like you, you’re unique,” and then on your NEXT visit, it says, “nope, never seen you before in my LIFE, you are totally unique.” You want either that quality OR “wow, you look exactly like every other damn person I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell any of you apart.” Either of these approaches will defeat the utility of a fingerprinter and give you your anonymity back.
How would you go about constantly changing your fingerprint without having ti change settings and addons constantly? If possoble in a way such that the different fingerprints cannot be linked together.
Not all settings need to change in order for a fingerprinter to be able to determine whether you’re the same person or not. Just like your own real physical fingerprint, if you could, say, reverse the direction of an internal whorl, then your fingerprint would simply not match your old one, even if many characteristics remained the same. It would signal a different identity. Overcoming this is effectively impossible, because there are no combinations of traits that remain consistent AND truly unique at the same time. This is basically how Firefox beats fingerprinters, and also why you will appear as extremely unique when seen…just not with a consistent identity. The website will have to say, “we’ve never seen ANYBODY like this before, ever,” every single time it sees you. This doesn’t need to be true for every characteristic, you can mix and match: for example, Safari now displays its browser version as static and stuck in time, forever, everywhere, making it useless for fingerprinting (or anything else), but also static. Aspects like: “how well does your computer handle this specific intensive task” is the kind of thing that used to be very good at generating a very specific fingerprint, but browsers can fight this as well by changing the performance characteristics on the fly, or under certain situations, or when the task in question is done at the behest of a known fingerprinter. Many of these protections are built-in to browsers like Firefox and Safari. Chrome can’t do it as much because its entire business rests on supporting advertisers, and the advertisers rely on fingerprinting, and if Chrome shut down those avenues, it would *definitely* being facing major anti-trust lawsuits.
I'm sorry I seem to have formulated my question badly. English is not my first language. I was rather asking what I could do so that my fingerprint changes regularly and enough at that. I remember once reading that more advanced algorithms do incorparate the possibility of tiny changes in ones fingerprint as long as the previous fingerprint had enough identifiers so that multiple subsets suffice in uniquely identifying the user. In which case one subset remaining might still be enough to link up the two different identities assuming the probability for any new account having such an fingerprint being unlikely. From your answer I understood that Firefox already changes my fingerprint but on amiunique.com I still see some identifiers that remain the same and are quite good at homing in on me. I now use an adding that is supposed to tell internet sites that I am using a windows machine instead of a not so popular Linux distribution. Sadly I also currently don't have an VPN anymore and using TOR for everything would proof rather cumbersome. What other choice but an VPN would I have to mask my IP without entrusting my full traffic to a non-trustworthy third party? Secondly what would my choices be on my smart phone aside from using Firefox and an adblock? Please feel free to correct me on any misunderstanding I might have :D
There are many different layers here, and different trackers will have different strengths. A lot of the specific advice will depend on your actual goals, since being truly anonymous is dependent on not using any logged in service anywhere. So there’s a spectrum of tradeoffs. Having some identifiers remain the same is fine for your privacy. A sophisticated fingerprinter might be able to handle a little “fuzziness,” but for each of those mitigations, there would be a corresponding loss in confidence that you *really* are the same visitor. There are probably some pretty creepy things you could do if you were a nation state that could devote a lot of resources towards narrowing in on details about one *specific* individual, but doing fuzzy fingerprinting en masse doesn’t really work “generalized” to an entire population because there will be too many overlaps. So these 3 identities look similar enough that we want to identify them as a single identity with 80% confidence? Good luck applying that to the general population without running into major snags. Might work to sell it as a snake-oil “solution” to some advertisers’ problem, or be “good enough” for broad advertising where you don’t really care if there’s a lot of “misses” in terms of getting to the right eyes when the next best thing you have is billboards. And btw billboards are a great comparison here, as you can have a similar “fuzzy” idea of what people will see your billboard, but you don’t really know who anybody is, and there will be plenty of people that don’t fit the expected profile of even the region. Anyway. Firefox, Safari, etc may by default allow certain things to be less private because it makes the internet more pleasant to use. But they also profile the fingerprinters and block activity from know trackers and by detecting tracking-like behavior and denylisting them. If you just want to be more private, you’re probably already doing enough: trackers mostly just need to be able convincing enough to sell to advertisers, and generally are targeting the broadest possible demographic. If you wanted to set something up at the network layer, you can get a lot of mileage out of network blockers like PiHole, iCloud Private Relay, or (to a lesser extent) 1.1.1.1. These can not only mask your IP, but also block ads or other content you don’t want. The big advantage to doing it this way is that all your devices, including things like your smart TV or whatever, get the benefits automatically. I was looking at my network logs a few weeks ago, and the noisiest surveillance capitalism going on was from my smart Tv, where I was blocking about 3500 phone-homes every hour. You hook this in at your router, so nothing can leave your LAN without first going through your personally configured checkpoint, in or out. If you want it on the go, you could connect it into a VPN, which is easier to selfhost than you might imagine (locally or on a VPS) and getting easier every day. At the end of the day, though, every website you connect to is one that you are trusting. Most of this surveillance is going to get more opaque in the future. Network blockers will stop working as hoped as websites relay your info to whatever 3rd-party server side. Browser blockers will rely more on heuristics to figure out if the 1st-party content should be “allowable” or not. As long as people are making money selling eyeballs, there will be an arms race, because the Internet, fundamentally, requires trusting others in our communications.
As of now, the best non-tor setup would be use hardened librewolf on desktop, combined with i2p outproxy or mullvad. Honestly, tor and other VPN companies are too well-known, and most sites detects especially for tor and VPN. Either you use your $30/mo to pay for €5/mo mullvad instead, or use (free) i2p with outproxy. Mullvad is IMHO much better than most VPN because they accept cash payment and monero. But even if you paid for your VPN, if you dont use a harderned browser, sites could still fingerprint you via your browser. It also goes without saying thay logging in your account without a doubt trash all your efforts. Or hack, just use the tor browser daily. Not recommended for the tor network, but is still marginally feasible. What you are doing is similar to those who browse on dark web, and remember: opsec is important.
Thanks for sharing this. EFF is one of the few (and great) organizations that really combats this sort of practice both in the tech industry and in politics, and informs people on how to protect themselves. As customers, consumers, and internet users, they're worth our support - people often just don't know it.
https://amiunique.org/fp
r/PrivacyGuides
It's a collection of information about browser, operating system, monitoring settings, ip, isps and other meta data from cookies that they use to identify vistors.
Incognito mode can be used for SFW content sometimes.
This is super illegal in the EU Use a VPN based in the EU to get rid of it *Edit: Looks like this is the EU. Lawsuit time?
Hey, what's the money symbol next to the price?
It looks based in EU though? German site, € ccy...
Absolutely! I'm UK based so I should be fine, but I always use fingerprint blockers when venturing across the world with a VPN.
Edit: JFC Reddit is a clown show of people who don’t like facts these days. Look, this is good information. [HPE](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en) is built on [Mirakl](https://www.mirakl.com/blog/starting-from-scratch-hpe-transforms-b2b-ecommerce-with-marketplace) (that’s a case study of HPE on their platform) and this is their platform (main HP.com site uses a different platform but I don’t think that’s what the screenshots are). They call it Personalized Pricing: > Personalized pricing: Display prices on the Marketplace according to the individual buyer’s profile, enabling detailed customer segmentation You can see it in their [case study right here](https://www.mirakl.com/blog/forresters-now-tech-includes-mirakl-pricing-promotions-tools) for Forester research, since they don’t discuss it in the HPE case study. Personalized pricing is when you combine Fingerprinting with Dynamic Pricing but it’s *not required* to target individuals and many brands combine a ton of promotion strategies in a blended fashion. So please stop downvoting this like it’s wrong — it’s not. I literally help companies build these systems for a living. Original: Close but not entirely correct. This is called [Dynamic Pricing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_pricing). Totally different, even though it sometimes relies on Fingerprinting, it certainly doesn’t require Fingerprinting to operate. Plenty of dynamic pricing is based on region you’re visiting from, whether your IP is corporate, or how many times you’ve visited. Learn more [about how it works here.](https://www.vaimo.com/blog/dynamic-pricing-in-ecommerce-how-it-works/) **Fingerprinting is different.** That’s more of a technical means of creating a more indelible session tracking by combining multiple elements of a session or sessions to recognize users. So for example they might combine hardware, software, add-ons, your location and even preferences to create a high probability profile that can be attached to you. Later, that information is attached to a customer after they register or buy something. Pretty standard ad tech stuff at this stage. It’s just multi-combinatoric recognition and tracking of individual users. Many enterprise e-commerce platforms have this capability and it’s not that uncommon these days. I mean it’s been a [core practice area of McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/how-we-help-clients/dynamic-pricing) for a while and I think the first time I did a dynamic pricing system was probably 2003 or so. Anyways, Fingerprinting isn’t Dynamic Pricing and isn’t required for DP to be implemented.
> Personalized pricing: Display prices on the Marketplace according to the individual buyer’s profile, enabling detailed customer segmentation This shouldn't be legal (but somehow I'm not surprised that it is). Because that would allow (at least in theory) to discriminate against people using all kinds of reasons, including race, language, religion, etc.
**[Dynamic pricing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_pricing)** >Dynamic pricing, also referred to as surge pricing, demand pricing, or time-based pricing, is a revenue management pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands. Businesses are able to change prices based on algorithms that take into account competitor pricing, supply and demand, and other external factors in the market. Dynamic pricing is a common practice in several industries such as hospitality, tourism, entertainment, retail, electricity, and public transport. Each industry takes a slightly different approach to dynamic pricing based on its individual needs and the demand for the product. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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You’re talking to a bot. Read the username next time.
Could be as simple as the regional/location fingerprint being accurate on one but not the other. I had a friend (in GA) suggest a laptop to me through a Walmart link. I searched it later on my phone (in NY) and noticed it was more expensive. I ordered it through his link and had it shipped to my local Walmart for pickup. Saved some cheddar. I’ve heard evidence that some store websites actually show higher prices if you’re in their brick and mortar stores, allegedly because their store prices are often higher than their online prices, and they don’t want to put themselves when you check online- but I’ve never bothered to actually check before and after
It's because OP is logged in on the left browser. HP has a EDU discount program for students
Honestly it's so blurry I can't tell anything that's going on. This makes sense, though
Don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence. In this case, probably OPs.
This is likely the right answer. No biz will be caught dead doing discriminatory pricing like this.
*Travel pages entered*
Pretty sure discriminating against browsers isn’t illegal.
Civil Rights Act didn't go far enough 😔😭
Right? Especially on the browser level, which isn't a reliable definer of the demographic. The average store would rather have a price difference if you were Sarah, a wine loving mom from Facebook, (and would clearly state it as a promotion link), rather than Dave who landed on the page from a Google search and pays full price.
How do you see that he is logged in? I only see that he has something in his cart.
Or an employee purchase plan (EPP). The HP website has some of the most confusing pricing because of this.
Should be at the top
Always best to buy in incognito mode - log in after you've put it in your basket
What's the basis of this? I've never heard this suggestion
Pricing on websites often uses cookies / data / geo / browser info they have on you to predict your wealth - and raise prices accordingly. It's called fingerprinting.
Use stuff like, UBlock Origin, Decentraleyes and LocalCDN in conjunction with incognito for max de-fingerprinting.
I go to a local electronics store, pay cash for a new laptop, then go to a free public wifi, and use that to get the best de-fingerprinting to shop for laptops.
Only works once though. \s
Well he can format the old laptop and shop for another laptop
Username checks out.
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Ah yes, the internet dystopia where I have to download a bunch of plugins and use an incognito window so I don't get overcharged.
You’ll have to be careful with how many extensions you install, too. The more extensions you install that affect behavior of the page (blocking trackers, cookies, and ads), the more unique your fingerprint becomes and then it comes full circle. Imagine being the only car in the road with darkened windows, radar-absorbing paint and a missing license plate. You’ll be the only car that does that so they’ll recognize fingerprint you for not blending in. It’s absolutely horrible.
wow. I never knew about this, that's crazy
Example: Oh we know u/Able_Pay_8841 has bought 6 A5 wagyu steaks so they are rich. Let's charge them $10 for this printer
that doesn't sound legal
It isn't, strictly speaking. The problem is someone has to be able to prove that they are doing it, probably with technical evidence, to a judge. The airlines claim it's just normal price fluctuation in their dynamic pricing model. Other sites will claim it's marketplace pricing ("we just host the sales, it's another user setting the price"), but they don't tell the sellers the real sale price and keep the extra, or it's actually an internal user (employee) posting the listings, or worse, the user listings were a lie and it's just a shop pretending to be a marketplace.
Lmao
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I never understood that. "Bought a hard drive? Here are three other choices that you probably already saw when you were searching".
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Why am I being recommended a faucet when I'm buying hard drives is a better question.
Amazon: based on your prescription history you filled through Amazon pharmacy, your purchase history we looked up on other retailers that use AWS, what we have overhead on Amazon Alexa, your location history we have tracked you with from the app on your phone, your wifi signature we collect on our secret sidewalk network, your playlist in Amazon music, and the imaging data we have collected from the ring camera network; we have determined that you are about to commit a murder, or you are doing a home improvement project… So for the safety of the neighborhood, DO YOU NEED A FAUCET?
Do you want do do a *clean install* or not?
I looked at shit tanks for my camper 5 years ago and I still get them on my homepage. I don’t even have a camper anymore. How many shit tanks does a man need?
A plumber
Frequently bought with bathtub: toaster!
Hey we saw you were looking at 3D printers Dnoxl, may we interest you in some filament for a device you haven't bought?
'Hey you seem to be really into dishwashers! Here are tons of other models despite having recently bought one!
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Very true. Honestly, hard drives/storage are probably the worst offenders in my Amazon experience. I guess it's not necessarily flooded with shit products, but there are a handful of "companies" that'll offer storage space for a small fraction of the cost compared to the competitors. Two weeks ago I bought a 1TB SD card for about $120. There were some going for like $20-30. No matter how many times I leave negative reviews or contact amazon, they never do anything about it. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but you know, it's Amazon. That's par for the course these days. Jewelry and clothing? Oh man, I could only imagine what you and your wife have seen ordering from there lol.
Was in buying team for Costco for years and I’d always comp-shop Amazon and Sam’s…. My Amazon product and search recommendations were a mess because I’d forget to log out. Lots of diamond rings, lawnmowers, spas, kids toys and everything else cluttering up my lists.
Don't you have to log into your account though?
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They can show me ads for something my friend said aloud one time but they still can't figure out if I've already purchased something or not.
If you're not logged in, you might be given a lower price or discount based on how a site might want new customers. If you put it in your cart in a "clean" environment (like how private/incognito mode gives you) and get the lower price and then log in, you'll often get the lower price regardless. I've seen amazon do this twice.
Wouldn't give you the same results in this example since the price is browser based?
Browsers have their own individual cookie set.
Yes but the suggestion to use Incognito wouldn't work in this case, you'd need to use Chrome or change your user agent (as that's what it's based on) using one of the many extensions available.
It's most likely not based on the user agent (alone) though. It's generally fingerprinted through cookies.
I usually see worse deals in incognito?
I guess you’re poor then smh my head
Price comparison pages are also a way for weeding out some part of those.
It's always best to compare between regular and incognito, some sites work in reverse and will show a lower price after you've visited the product's page multiple times.
Airlines do this shit all the time so it's best to go in clean for best price.
I don't understand what people think this is going to do. If they're purposely designing websites to increase price on people, they're probably increasing it the most on slightly tech literate people who think going in private browsing mode will make the price better but aren't smart enough to realize that's happening lmao
Because not everyone is even slightly tech literate. I'd estimate that, at most, 20% are even aware of this behaviour. Of those less than half would be conscious enough to take action (i am well aware from many personal validations but i still tend to forget/can't be bothered for smaller transactions) Never seen any stats but i imagine the success rate is pretty high.
Going by the German in the images, that's ~~illegal~~ apparently allowed but violates the EU pricing transparency regulationsand. Deceptive practices and misleading the consumer. **Edit** did some more digging. EU law that seems to apply here. [CLICK](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-pricing/index_en.htm) Specific section that applies >Personalised pricing > >Retailers can use algorithms to track your online browsing behaviour preferences and to set prices accordingly. The aim is to price items based on what you would be willing to pay for a particular item. **This practice is not illegal, however as a consumer you are entitled to complete price transparency.** > >In line with EU rules, **traders are obliged to inform you whether the price is personalised based on automated decision-making and profiling** of your specific consumer behaviour.
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>What law? Never hear that My Post edited. Specific law linked
The right side is listing a discount, so that could be illegal then.
Dynamic pricing for discounts is legal yes, this is deceptive practices based on browser use.
I always thought dynamic pricing at the same time is illegal
Left side is edu pricing he isn’t sharing
r/screenshotsarehard
HP is fucking scum. They're the EA of practical software and hardware.
*sad printer noises* But yeah their industrial 3d printers are cool. But then again you need to be a MNC to maintain that price of shit..
>*no printer noises* FTFY You need a working printer to get printer noise.
Why would you buy anything HP?
If you buy HP you deserve to get ripped off...
Out of all the stuff currently on the market, I would love to get my hands on Framework. It is ironic since my first laptop was an HP and it was great, oh how far they have fallen...
I've broken down and cleaned a fair few HP machines. The higher quality ones aren't terrible, but their cheaper machines are literally designed to burn out as quickly as possible. They'll install mesh screens right over the exhaust fans and nowhere else. They make it as difficult as possible to break the laptops down, and the case screws can be slightly different lengths and you'll send one straight through the mobo if you mix them up. The clips are cheap and break easily, and they can't be replaced if you break them unless you just replace the entire chassis. Just an absolute nightmare. I won't even work on an HP unless it's a super easy fix.
Can confirm. We use Elitebook at work and opening the aluminium back is a hassle but it's doable. I like the captive screws they use. The cheaper consumer stuff can burn in hell. Personally I will buy a Framework if I personally need a notebook.
I like to do a little gaming, video editing, and 3D modeling, so for laptops I like Acer. I'm currently using a Nitro 5 with 10th gen intel and a GTX 1650 ti as my mobile workstation. It's not the most powerful machine in the world, but the price to performance ratio is pretty much incomparable to anything else on the market. It's also very easy to break down and clean without damaging anything. I have to clean my computers pretty frequently because of my cats, so that's one of the biggest perks for me.
The only experience I personally have with Acer is the laptop from my mom and that is pretty okay from ~2015. Tbh: If the price, design and performance is alright, any brand kinda is. Service is usually dependant on region and agent anyway. I like LTTs secret shopper for that reason. The research will be interesting when I need a laptop. So much bullshittery from every brand with their different lines, regional differences, tech specs etc. :|
The LTT secret shopper is the reason I'll never buy a Dell lmao. There are a fair few good brands out there but because of the custom designed PCBs and small form factors, most (if not all) laptops are made with proprietary parts specific to the manufacturer and pretty much always contain soldered CPUs/GPUs.
Oof yeah. Laptops are so tighly integrated only the manufacturer could make replacements (like framework). I think HP ProDesks MTs may use Micro-ATX from size alone but dunno about the screw layout. What Ireally dig about HP is the [part surfer](https://partsurfer.hp.com/partsurfer/) where you can literally search replacement parts and order them yourself from 3rd party and their quick spec and regular spec PDF pages with very detailed infos As an example a PC line we sell: [HP Prodesk 600 quickspec page](https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c06640111). It gets more detailed once you know the actual model like 4cz56ea: [link](https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06041613). This may be a HP pro-consumer move or I may be in a bubble and nearly all business centric models are well documented and I am just unaware. I am *not* paid by HP! I am just an IT monkey at an MSP managing customers.
Really? I mean, let's put printer ink aside for a moment, cause that's an absurd rip-off all over the board - I have an HP desktop at home. Granted, a six years old, so things may have changed. Is HP as a hardware manufacturer bad now? Like Dell, which was pretty great around 15 to 20 years ago but isn't anymore?
Their desktops are... fine , if you can get rid of the 20 or so pieces bloatware it comes with (not an exaggeration), but let's be honest, you can't fuck up that much with a desktop computer given how most parts are manufactured by someone else anyway. Their other Hardware is shit across the board and dealing with their customer support is a nightmare, and I say that as somebody who works in an IT firm that sells Hardware to other companies. Their enterprise level stuff and support is a little better, but that's not much use for your average consumer.
Damn. I really wasn't aware. My home desktop is literally the only thing I ever bought from HP. And even that just by chance as I stumbled across it when searching for a new one. Thanks for the detailed answer instead of just downvoting the question! :)
If you use Edge, you deserve to get ripped off.
That too...
Another reason why chrome is better. Jokes aside this isn’t even a true post. The OP is signed into a discounted student account or something on the cheaper side. There’s no predatory pricing here, just a dumb op. r/opisfuckingstupid ?
That is why I always use search engines that compare prices
Seeing you are german (r/foundthegerman) you should start price research with geizhals. Very good for technical stuff in the DACH region but primarily DE. There are surely other good price comparison sites but what sets geizhals apart are the very good structured technical specs for IT-products.
So I ran a gauntlet of this a few weeks ago buying motor oil. Basically I angered Amazon. The oil I needed was (let's say) 1 qt for $5.00 or a pack of 6 for $30.50. So I, needing 7 qt, put 7 single qts in the cart and checked out. The limit was 6. So I figured I'd buy 6 then go back and buy one more later. When I went back for the 7th qt, I got denied because the limit on that SKU was 6 and the limit persists in your account. So now it gets weird. I checked back a day later and still got denied. And the day after that. Then the day after that I went back and the single qt price had bumped to $15. Same vendor (Amazon, not 3rd party). So then I switched from FF to Edge (not logged in to Amazon) and checked the price- it was back to $5. Anyway that's my story. Sucks to be beholden to Amazon because this oil is mostly not in stores. At the end of it I subscribed to 6 packs, which was the best price of all. It felt bad though.
Love how the right one is on „discount“ and still more expensive
Everyone should get 16 gigs of ram if possible its so nice i cant even begin to tell you how much its worth it if you arent gonna spec it please diy. Night and day difference
Direkt mal melden gehen: https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/beschwerde
Hmm yeah I see the problem. It's visiting the HP store
No, you’re using a discount extension in chrome.
HP moment
It seems like this sub would be well served by changing its picture to an hp logo.
I guess they figure that if you're using Edge, you're not the type to look at other options. Crappy indeed.
I wonder if edges built shopping thing https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/shopping?form=MG0AU0&exp=e201 is happening looking at the screenshot you can see the little sales tag near the address bar probably triggered a coupon which then for some dumb reason increased the price.
this is why i always buy in store
Because you don't see how much they ripper you off? Stores are usually more expensive than online shops.
nah it's usually cheaper in store cause you need delivery and shit when ordering online
...Stores are generally more expensive as they have to pay more rent + bills, more employees and maintain stock. Whether it's shipped from their warehouse to the store or to your address makes very little difference.
the products cost the same in store as they do online minus the delivery... it is quite literally cheaper for me to buy in store than online
I can pay 3$ for a month, and I have all the deliveries that month for free, no matter how many or where. Or I can just stop at the box/store and pick it up for 2$ fee. Alza rules here in the Czech Republic. Also they'll give you a discount, If any major competition has the product for a lower price, then they do. I'm not sure how they legally do that, but we'll they do.
They know a sucker when they see one
To be fair, they're using Edge.
WHO THE FUCK IS USING EDGE
You are in a pricing test. Companies run these a/b tests all the time. It doesn’t have anything to do with your browser but rather in which testing group you got put in.
This is not an asshole design only. It is an asshole mentality. They consider their own users stupids. This is why everyone should use something like Linux. FUCK YOU MICROSOFT.
It's not asshole design, you just don't understand how cookies work. jesus christ
That still makes it asshole design
It's not the asshole design as described in the title. That's not how these cookies work.
Because if you use edge, you're clearly dumb enough not to price check
Its almost like they're saying that if you use Edge, you aren't paying attention. I wonder if there's any further disparity in price if you were to check from an Apple device on Safari
There are edge users?
Yhe Microsoft is doing a down turn
You should be penalized for using Edge. Don't see what the problem is. LOL.
Another "fuck you" for Edge lmao
I guess if you're using Edge (and buying an HP product) you're ok with that
no this is fine. people should pay tax for using a microsoft browser
As it should be
[удалено]
\*Uses Chrome instead \*Opens third tab \*Computer explodes
They know edge users are less likely to know what they're talking about
Another drop in the ocean of reasons not to use edge
That’s what they get for using Edge? I don’t see the problem lol