Forced Obsolescence / Obsolescence by Design

Captive portals could check the age of the phone by looking at the user agent string in the HTTP headers. I’m not sure how often that happens, but at several cafes my AOS 5 device would detect a captive portal and then simply render a giant red padlock that covers the screen.

Certainly a majority of the DoS I experience is simply a broken captive portal. The browser renders fewer objects than intended by the web devs, who recklessly assume all browsers are bleeding edge latest that can handle whatever coding frills they deploy. E.g. the screen might say something like “click ‘agree’ to gain access”, but then there is no button, tickbox, or object labeled ‘agree’. A bus or train captive portal will render a nice looking travel-related landscape image, and nothing else. No text. No buttons. Just an image. People with fancy phones would of course get some kind of object they can interact with. One supplier presents an agreement tickbox, but tapping on the box does not cause the box to tick.

I’m not sure what the red padlocks are about. Maybe the devs know they created a discriminatory shitshow, and they choose the dress up the dysfunctionality by detecting browser age and throw up a red padlock instead of trying.