Interview Basil

19 Nov 2019

Non-expert

Basil is an entrepreneur in the sports and entertainment sector and very interested in data. He has a wide and varied experience with many browsers and the Internet in many countries.

Key findings

• Actively looks for HTTPS in the URL
• Pays attention to the URL in particular for codes or affiliate links that might be in them and understands roughly how they work
• Believes URLs or the browser should be more specific and tell the user what is going on with them
• Would like to understand more about P2P but thinks there needs to be first an agreed and common definition of what it means that people can understand
• Warning can be too intrusive and annoying and ruin things even with good intentions, such as the GDPR warnings for cookies

Interview notes

• He runs a business and uses the internet for everything
• Uses browsers for everything, especially reading, commerce/shopping
• Uses Safari, Chrome, Edge and Brave (occasionally)
• Actually still uses sometimes Opera Mini which was great for mobile a while ago and could take 800k to 6k
• Interested in knowing how different things work and keeping up
• Edge is being phased out but want to know how it works
• Sometimes uses different ones for convenience, when have to see Xero but the Australian one
• If would use Mac would use Safari
• There is a problem with password memory and portability with auto-complete
• Work is on desktop and regular browsing and news on mobile
• Tabs are lots better on the desktop
• Google and Bing blur the lines with the search and URL bar especially on mobile
• Used to autocomplete with .com but now it goes to search
• Chrome gives suggested search options which is good on mobile
• Uses mobile search in the URL bar
• Pays attention to URL for security and redirects
• Notices HTTPS and actively looks for it when making purchases
• Looks for padlock icon and sometimes trusts domains in other browsers
• If in Opera would be more cautious because they have some “history” (they screwed something up with virtual machine rendering?)
• Aware of all URL or at least the structure and looks for codes and affiliate links which might be in the URL. Knows sort of how it works
• Shares links daily and copies from URL to share
• Would send URLs usually in email
• Outlook have good protection from spoofing but they hid the actual link
• Links should reflect what is going on
• .co or .com structure on website so look for where true source
• Used to bookmark but now don’t anymore
• Mainly for frequent used sites use dedicated apps
• Search history is really handy - it’s like in WhatsApp just use search don’t go the contact section for the person
• P2P means things get sent in any direction
• Protocols now can use other people’s processing powers when you’re on P2P (VPN Hola) but don’t like the practices of using your computer
• Skype uses P2P for network?
• Would like to understand more about it but pretty sure it means downloading and serving at the same time. It needs to be open and show info of what is going on.
• There should be a standard definition of P2P is with full descriptions and control
• GDPR websites are too much and intrusive and some websites show bottom right that they’re capturing something which is better
• Like the padlock and knows that it is a secure protocol but it needs to tell me
• Can contact in the future for further questions