InfoSec Taylor Swift tweeted about how a man using AOL’s dialup and AT&T got charged $24,000 for the number he dialed.
My take away?
https://twitter.com/Ipstenu/status/593236980848164864
You see, I read this line and did a double take.
Eighty-three-year-old Ron Dorff of Woodland Hills is one of the 2.2 million remaining AOL dial-up customers.
2.2 million people are still on AOL dialup.
Most of my Twitter followers took my shock the wrong way. Folks, I know that there are many reasons for this. I know that folks in the sticks don’t have other options. I know that it’s cheaper than satellite for people on a budget.
None of that was my point.
Or rather, it was but not the way people seem to think about it.
Woodland Hills is in the LA Metro area. He has other options. Still not my point.
No, my point is something Eric Mann said at WordCamp Portland 2013 that stuck with me (and my wife). My point is that if only 50% of phones in America are smart phones and that if 2.2 million people in the US use AOL dialup, that’s a lot of people.
50% of America is 159.45 million.
2.2 million people is 0.69% of America.
Interestingly, a Pew survey determined that 3% of Americans use dialup at home. That’s 9 million people.
My ‘terrifying’ moment had nothing to do with the fact that people are on AOL (though I admit I thought AOL had canned dialup). My moment was entirely because we, the creators of the internet, are making a poor experience for about 9 million people. Realistically, we’re probably making the internet suck for a lot more, with our heavy websites that do a million things and are slow.
In our push to go forward, we forget about the past, and we forget to take care of the past and degrade nicely. We can’t always support everyone, but 3.18% of Americans on the internet use IE8 (according to statcounter). If we still care about IE 8 (and yes, we do), then we should care about the 3% who use dialup, and the more who are stuck on their cell phones (check out the 7.9% of users who are on the ‘other’ OS for phones, I bet they’re the ones on non-smart phone).
It’s terrifying how, in our push forward, we forget them.
The video is 5 minutes. You can watch it.
