ok, curiosity won and I tried it on a couple

yes, they all willingly sent the password reset link to the domain

yes, they let me reset the password

no, they didn’t have mfa

yes, they let me log in to the “deleted” accounts

yes, i saw order histories, names, dob’s, last four of credit cards

yes, i disclosed to the security contacts i could find at the companies

yes, one of them was the viagra place

it feels like a lot of the arguments i hear boil down to "what if none of the bad things were happening right now, and instead, good things happened instead"

and sure, if that were true, things would be good

but, well, all of the bad things are happening already and none of the good things are any closer to appearing

and i'm just not confident "wait and see if everything reverses course" is a sensible way to evaluate the impact of new technologies

similarly, i've heard a few times that "we might cure cancer", and sure enough some brute force computation can fold proteins fast

but in practice it is more likely these tools will be used to fabricate experimental results, push dietary supplements and other snakeoil cures

and more coarsely, ai isn't pouring funding into the CDC, ai isn't reversing the destruction of the FDA, and is more than likely going to be used to justify those things