I’ve noticed that just as the most aggressive ad blocker blockers are news media websites, the most aggressive tor-exit-node blockers are retail sites such as lowes.com. My working hypothesis is that they view anonymous transactions (or perhaps even anonymous window shopping) as stealing. When it comes to actionable data for market research, data about actual finalized transactions where actual money changed hands is the holy grail. It’s the data that has skin in the game. As for window shopping online, you know the drill, you do that, you hear about it on Fecebook. Until recently I searched retail sites with the site: filter of a search engine (the one that works on Tor, of course), but until recently, most site searches were even more enshittified than most of the two search engines. Now search engines are out and Tor is out. Perhaps offline shopping is in. BTW, just for shits and giggles, try carrying a clipboard next time you visit a brick and mortar retail establishment and see what happens, or better yet, whip out your cell phone and start photographing not merchandise but shelf tags. Information is power, my friends.
the most aggressive tor-exit-node blockers are retail sites such as lowes.com.
Lowes doesn’t care about anonymous window shopping - they care about the transactions. Transactions coming from a tor exit node are more likely to be fraudulent than those from a regular shopper not trying to mask their origin.
The cost of implementing a tor exit node blocker is much less than the costs associated with fraudulent orders (and the corresponding increase in chargebacks from those fraudulent orders and the impact that has on the usage fees from the credit card processing companies).
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I remember hearing that Yelp blocks Tor users, but I’m not sure if that is the case through proxies.
Also iirc Cloudflare blocks all Tor exits.
I’ve used sites with cloudflare over Tor. They always seem to require pressing a check box, but usually work.
I’ve noticed that just as the most aggressive ad blocker blockers are news media websites, the most aggressive tor-exit-node blockers are retail sites such as lowes.com. My working hypothesis is that they view anonymous transactions (or perhaps even anonymous window shopping) as stealing. When it comes to actionable data for market research, data about actual finalized transactions where actual money changed hands is the holy grail. It’s the data that has skin in the game. As for window shopping online, you know the drill, you do that, you hear about it on Fecebook. Until recently I searched retail sites with the site: filter of a search engine (the one that works on Tor, of course), but until recently, most site searches were even more enshittified than most of the two search engines. Now search engines are out and Tor is out. Perhaps offline shopping is in. BTW, just for shits and giggles, try carrying a clipboard next time you visit a brick and mortar retail establishment and see what happens, or better yet, whip out your cell phone and start photographing not merchandise but shelf tags. Information is power, my friends.
Lowes doesn’t care about anonymous window shopping - they care about the transactions. Transactions coming from a tor exit node are more likely to be fraudulent than those from a regular shopper not trying to mask their origin.
The cost of implementing a tor exit node blocker is much less than the costs associated with fraudulent orders (and the corresponding increase in chargebacks from those fraudulent orders and the impact that has on the usage fees from the credit card processing companies).