Ryan Bridge: I don't sleep anymore, I just fill out forms

Ever tried to buy a pair of shoes online recently? What about a book? Or even book a haircut?

You would have been asked a billion questions.

It starts with what day and time you want your haircut.

Yep, fine, but then they want your; name, address, birthdate, postal address, how did you hear about us? What shampoo do you use?

I didn't ask for all that. At this point I'd rather pull my hair out in clumps than sit here and answer all these stupid, irrelevant questions.

I've been trying to get paid this week. I realise this is dangerous ground to be treading, I've only been here a week and the people are great but the processes, again, absurd.

You'd think they just want my bank account number, IRD number and tax code.

No.

Every personal detail under the sun - my sex, title, home address, ethnicity.

This sent me into a tailspin, why do you need to the colour of my skin to pay me? It's not a legal requirement, and the stupid drop-down box wasn't working. I tried to select European but wouldn't let me.

What the hell do you need to know if I'm Indian for? Are you paying me in Rupees? Would my wages turn up in Dong if I tick Vietnamese?

The reason I ask, and this goes for pretty every company on the planet, I just don't trust them.

Some Nigerian or Russian hacker will ram-raid their system at some point, and before you know it the world knows I'm an Indian male being paid XYZ.

It's totally unnecessary. I did an official calculation and I think I spend roughly 75% of my day filling in useless forms online.

I don't sleep anymore, I just fill in forms.

And why is this important? Well, thousands of companies have thousands of bits of data about us. They sell it, wax lyrical about online safety, then get hacked and barely apologise.

It happens all the time.

So, I've come up with an annoyingly named, hyperbolic bill which I'm hoping the government will pick up.

The “Excessive Digital Information Collection Protection Bill.”

For every question they ask us, we get $5. I want a reject all cookies function like they have in Europe, and I want the ability to sue if my data is stolen.

I hate it. I hate that we can't just pick up the phone and get stuff done anymore.

Happy Friday.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever tried to buy a pair of shoes
online recently? Maybe a T shirt? Maybe try and book
a haircut online. You'd have been asked a billion and
one questions, what time, what day do you want your haircut?
That stuff's fine. Then they want your name, your address,
your birth date, your postal address, How did you hear
about us? What shampoo do you use? I didn't ask

(00:20):
for all of that. At this point, I'd rather pull
my hair out in clumps than actually go through all
of these stupid, irrelevant questions and actually get my haircut
with you. I've been trying to get paid from newstalk
Z'DB this week. I probably shouldn't talk about this, but
I've been trying to get paid. You see, because it's
important to get paid. You need to pay for things
like haircuts. And I realized this is very dangerous ground

(00:43):
to be treading on. I've only been here a week
and the people here are wonderful, great, excellent people. I
want to make that point, but some of the processes,
oh my goodness, just absurd. You'd think they just want
my bank account, my ID number, whatever, pay me. No,
every personal detail under the sun, they want it. You name, it.
They want it, my sex, probably who I'm having sex with,

(01:06):
my home address, my ethnicity. This is the one that
I couldn't understand. This sent me into a tailspin. Why
do you need the color of my skin to pay me?
And this is not just my employer's situation, by the way,
this is a third party who runs this, so that
there must be plenty of people and companies out there
that are doing this. It's not a legal requirement. And

(01:29):
the stupid drop down box wasn't working for me, so
I wasn't even able to pick my ethnicity. I tried
to pick European and it would have let me. I
tried all of them. I tried to say it was
Chinese or Tino, even Indian, and I'm like, are you
going to pay me in rupees? What is the significance
of my ethnicity to whether I'm getting paid or not? Anyway,
I calmed myself down and sorted that issue out. But

(01:52):
the reason I ask is and the reason I'm talking
about this is because a lot of the information that
we give these companies goes into some big database at
the back end of their computer system, and oftentimes these
computer systems get hacked. Thousands of companies have thousands of
bits of data about us, and they not only sell

(02:12):
it between one another, but as I said, can often
get hacked. So I've come up with an idea, a
bill I'm hoping to get through Parliament. It's called the
Excessive Digital Information Collection Protection Bill. And for every question
they ask us, we get five bucks. And I want
to be able to reject all cookies. You know that
function they have over in Europe that we don't have here.

(02:33):
I want to be able to have that function here too.
And I want the ability to sue if my data
is stolen. And I'm talking billions of dollars. Just go away,
Just stop asking all these questions. It's incessant, it's unnecessary,
and it puts all of us more at risk when
it comes to scammers. It's twenty nine minutes after five.

(02:55):
This is News Talk said BE News is next, and
we're going to talk about retail crime just before seven o'clock.
Let me to my all this time. I listed you
are right there all along for more from News Talks

(03:15):
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