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Comment by euske | Hacker News Reader

I've been saying that there are three "scammy" markets which tend to have a higher ratio of overpriced, scammy products, and they're the following:

* Health

* Education

* Office productivity

And now,

* Home security (New!)

The reason that I think these markets tend to be scammy is because their quality is mostly based on perception. And there's no easy way to drastically improve these, people tend to look for a magic pill. And you're right, security is certainly going to be one of them.

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If we really take security seriously then we should be talking about LAN of things. Anything that requires a connection to the internet and that takes firmware upgrades from the manufacturer and hides data from the user/owner is a security threat not a security agent.

We are still living in a corporation centric paradigm and until we start talking about user centric systems any talk about security and privacy is a joke.

I'd be interested if you could break these issues out a bit more :

- connection to the internet; seems to me that this is a trade off, without some sort of network access it's hard to see how many devices can be useful in many applications. But that connection can be constrained. - firmware upgrades - is this about trust? - hides data - ok, I get this, but many users are not able to spend time working out what is going on.

I agree that corporations tend to privilege themselves, but of course the world is not just made of users. There are government actors and rogue actors as well, most users can't defend themselves - how should the playing field be organised in your opinion?

The point is that we're all playing the user role much more then the company owner/employee role.

Products and services are developed by companies and if they don't design things thinking about how they as users of those products and services would like to be treated, then everybody would have a worse overall experience.

There are simply some business models that produce far more negative experiences for more people then the actual gains for the owners. Advertising is the first example here..

We're all experiencig life as users and I'm saying that the systems we deign should be user centric so that from one's perspective everything falls into place seamleslly, without fragmentations..

Currently when interracting with technology I'm feeling that it's not designed for me but for the one that built it..

The first two bullet points on your list are very specific to an american perspective. As a dutchman I do not consider these scammy markets whatsoever.

$0.02:

As an Australian, I do agree with you, but only looking at them from what government services are provided. In terms of the industry, I think health/fitness is possibly the largest in terms of misinformation because no one wants to do simple exercise and eat well, everyone is looking for a shortcut to get bigger or smaller.

So I don't think that they're specific to the American perspective in a larger sense, but I do also see where you are coming from. Then again, neither of us are American!

As a Swede, I beg to differ. Both the two bullet points apply to other countries as well, such as Sweden. It's just that it hits you indirectly through taxes, instead of directly by you having to fork out bills from your wallet.

It's also scammy in the way that the current Regional Healthcare drives out fair competition to a large part.

I'd add banking/financial services to that list..

The greatest of all cons.

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