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Since when is it ok to publish this without a single shred of evidence to support the dude's claims?

Laughable to say the least.

Dude probably got owned locally.


Just tried http://www.equifax.com/fcra myself...it redirects to obviously shady sites, right now.

Edit: Currently it's doing it only for specific client user agents. Try an android one. This javascript is driving part of it: https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/5462/3h/hints.netflame.cc/se...

Edit: Found the bad bits. They are here: https://aa.econsumer.equifax.com/aad/uib/js/fireclick.js

See the part that starts with document.write()

Edit: maybe a red herring. Sure looks shady though.


What's the stack used for the real https version? I got redirected there (I guess malware doesn't like Safari desktop or uBlock origin saved me) and felt like I fell through a time warp to 2007 (update: 2004, in actuality) with the form Equifax presents. So much low-res skeuomorphism I almost got nostalgic.

Not necessarily related to the security issues, just curious.

Edited to add: The site has a Copyright of 2004. None of the JS tools are later than that. Is this really the current site in use? Unchanged for 13 years... wow. Would be sorta cool, you know, if it wasn't completely hacked.


Not at all, the site is definitely compromised. Someone posted a link[0] that when I opened on mobile is redirecting to a malware site. Confirmed on two separate Android devices running 7.1 + Chrome.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15456533


Want evidence? Click the link. Unless realcasinoslots.com is a creative new revenue stream for Equifax, the site has been hijacked.


> Unless realcasinoslots.com is a creative new revenue stream for Equifax...

I'm not sure if that'd increase or decrease their sleaze factor.


Maybe I’m not aware but I’m pretty used to just trusting large news outlets with good credibility on things like this


Looks dope, but not usable over Tor.

Requests to the API are returned with a 403 code.


Indeed.

This is hardly a legitimate statistics, how many sites sit behind CloudFlare/Sucuri/Incapsula IP's, which are always nginx reverse proxies.

I don't think anything changed that much as of late, apart from more and more people adopting CloudFlare.


Why are the bitrates so painfully low? 720p has a whooping 840Kbps and the best 1080p stream is just 6000Kbps.

Your streams are way too over-compressed IMO.


We have been playing around with our encoding profiles to try to find a good balance, so some videos might have higher caps than others. Unfortunately a large amount of our users are still in areas with horrible connections, so we have focused mostly on reducing buffering and start times. But now that we've been able to tackle that and improve our CDN's our content quality and UHD video are next on our list.


That's understandable.

But you can't offer HD with a bitrate that's too low even for proper SD. There are simply too many compression artifacts.

I for one would not subscribe to an HD (streaming) plan if my connection wasn't good enough for it. Your problem here is that you're trying to have both sub. plans work for all users, which you can't do without being dishonest about it.

Maybe just offer a download option for HD with proper bitrates? Then even the lowest connections can make use of it, because the download doesn't have to be streamable.


We originally got our bitrates from Netflix, and their HD seems to cap out at 5800. Unfortunately due to licenses we can't offer downloads, but we're hoping to add a way to allow a video to fully pre-buffer in HD before watching as an alternative to adaptive bitrate switching.


Yeah, Netflix is notorious for cringeworthy bitrates, you shouldn't look up to them. :-)

In a perfect world, streaming services should thrive to provide the same quality as their retail counterparts, or even better in this age. Technology allows it.

But the sad reality is that Netflix's 1080p is just 5800, whereas a Blu-ray usually has at least 20000, going to >35000 even. Consumers are basically ripped off in this situation, because the quality is sacrificed sometimes even up to 90%, making even TV a more viable viewing choice.


I'm sorry to be so blunt but given that Netflix has over 75 million subscribers it's far more likely that you're out of touch with what the majority of consumers are happy with. In an ideal world we could all stream 4k lossless video, but the real world has bandwidth limitations and plenty of people are quite happy with the video quality Netflix offers. Frankly, outside of niche places like audio/video-phile sites or the occasional tech site remark I've literally never heard anyone remark about poor video quality on Netflix.


I'm no videophile, but Netflix et al. are absolutely horrendous compared to any legitimate DVD or Blu-ray release.

You can even do an A/B test, they'd without a doubt prefer the Blu-ray version in case of HD.


Consumers can prefer Blu-ray quality while being satisfied with much lower quality. For many, quality of content and selection would be valued over picture quality.


Another important factor is the type of content. If you're watching a romantic comedy it might not be as important to be in hi-def as if you're watching LOTR.


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