Share your awkward and unpleasant interactions resulting from privacy practices

I hope not very many of you are wondering WTF awkward interactions have to do with privacy, but hopefully the following examples make it clear to any of you who are wondering that.

Story 1

So, I go to sign up for a bank account at <insert big-ass household-name (in the U.S.) bank name here>. As soon as I walk in the door and tell the person I want to sign up for a checking account, they say "ok, let's get you set up with the app."

Now, I was running Lineage at the time with no Google apps. Just F-Droid and stuff I could install from there. I had yet to install any proprietary apps on my phone. (Not necessarily saying there was nothing proprietary running on my phone. I'd be surprised if Lineage doesn't depend on some binary blob drivers and such for my particular phone. But still, my rule was "no proprietary apps." And even if I decided to break that rule at the time, I kindof doubt the bank's app wouldn't just refuse to work without Google Play Services.)

My mistake was to say "it won't work on my phone" rather than "I'm not interested in the app; can I still get a bank account here?" They pushed it hard. "It's Android, right?" "...Technically, but not the way you're-" "Ok, go to the Play Store." "I don't have the Play Store." "Let me see your home screen." (My second mistake was not ending that line of conversation there with a "no, just give me a bank account.")

Before it was all said and done, I'd scanned their QR code and hit the "install" button so I could show them the error message that resulted. It wasn't until then that they dropped it.

I honestly wonder if they didn't get a commission when folks installed the app.

Lesson learned. Don't say "my phone's weird and it won't work." Say "I'm not installing the app. The only question that remains is whether that means I'm taking my business elsewhere or not."

Story 2

Much more recent. Same phone, but by that point I'd switched to Ubuntu Touch. My phone just stops working as a phone abruptly. No calls or texts.

(The astute among you may already be thinking "oh, probably the carrier dropped 2G/3G support and now requires VoLTE." And if you're thinking that, congratulations you get 100 internet points, but don't spoil it for the rest of the class.)

Now, I've always been really nervous about cell phones. About the time they started being ubiquitous (back in the days of Nokia candy-bar phones with black-and-white LCD displays), I had just quit Windows for OpenSuSE, and then not long after that, Gentoo. And when cell phones started becoming smart phones, stuck with the dumbest phones I could find in the used-phone bin at the phone repair place in the mall. In other words, I was (and largely still am) Amish for QWERTY.

So, I honestly don't know shit about cellular communication technologies because I've never really used them. I've literally never had a data plan. I'm still grandfathered in on a no-data prepaid plan with my carrier that isn't available any more.

Anyway, back to my current story where my phone wasn't working. I had gotten a message a while previous that my SIM card (a physical SIM) would stop working at some point and I had to get a new SIM card. And my SIM card was super old. It was one I'd had to cut down to size and everything. I hadn't followed through on the SIM card replacement, so I figured that was the issue.

I don't have an online/web account with my carrier. And I still have never installed any proprietary apps on any phone, so I didn't have my carrier's official app. The chat and phone support wouldn't help me because they couldn't get proof that I was me. (They required text-message-code authentication, but my phone didn't work, so I couldn't receive the text.) They referred me to the T-Mobile store to get a new SIM card that would ostensibly work.

So, I suppressed my gag reflex and walked into the T-Mobile store. At the door, they asked me some basic questions and entered me into the queue. They told me it'd be 15 to 20 minutes of wait time.

I went and had a seat to wait. Well over an hour later, I finally asked someone for an updated wait time estimate. I'd apparently slipped through the cracks because as a prepaid customer, I appear on a different wait queue in their software than other customers. But at least prompting them got me attended to.

I told them the whole situation. I was glad they didn't try to push me to get a new phone and plan. And they did give me a new SIM card. But when they found out I was running Ubuntu Touch, they referred to it as a "bootleg rom", intimated that I might be doing something shady (because custom roms can supposedly "break the rules" and... I dunno get calls for free or some shit, I don't know), and warned me strongly to be very careful with what data I store on the phone. (As if a stock-firmware phone is completely trustworthy. Heh.)

Not only that, but the new SIM card didn't resolve the issue. Reverting to the stock firmware did. VoLTE is the only thing Ubuntu Touch doesn't support on that phone. So now I either stick on the stock firmware until that red x turns into a green checkmark or try to figure out if Lineage supports VoLTE on the Pixel 3a as a stop gap until I can go back to Ubuntu Touch.

Anyway, those are my stories. I'd love to hear more such painful interactions with "normies" who don't understand why you wouldn't use Facebook or smart kitchen knives that won't work without WIFI or what have you.