Michael Orlitzky was not having a good day with his laundry. First CSC Serviceworks, a laundry management company, replaced all of the machines in his building with new coin-op or app-powered ones. The card reading machines had been an issue for years because the cards would stop working and the recharge machine would steal dollar bills, Orlitzky said. Now he had another enemy with its own quirks to get used to. Plus, CSC had replaced the machines about a week ahead of schedule, meaning that any cash on his or others’ laundry cards was now worthless and unusable.
Then, one of the new machines ate his quarters. The first machine was stuck on the cold setting, and he had to pay another $2 and move all of his belongings to another machine. He called CSC customer service and was on hold for an hour. CSC eventually told him to get a refund through the company’s website, which in turn insisted he install CSC’s app to proceed.
“That was the day I decided laundry would be free,” Orlitzky told 404 Media in an email.
Orlitzky then discovered multiple bypasses to CSC machines that allow him to wash his clothes for free. Since then, he’s been pretty quiet about the whole thing. Orlitzky published a brief write-up of his escapades on his personal website last year, but hasn’t shared it on social media. Some people in his building know his secret, but that’s about it. That is, until now, with Orlitzky due to speak at the DEF CON hacker conference in August about how he found infinite money cheats for CSC laundry machines. The talk is called “Laundering Money.”
Right?
I offered to take photos at the angles they wanted and email them to my agent, but they said it had to go through the app. I’m pretty sure the adjustor that came out used the same app, but hey, that’s his (work?) phone, not mine. Nor is it my personal info I’m signing away the rights to by clicking “agree”.
Some of those type apps build a 3d image from multiple photos, it helps get a full assessment of damage and location. There used to be a great free one on android, but the company eventually moved it to a corporate website paid service. I was able to take several rounds of photos of my salad bowl, it sent it to the cloud to be processed then you get a 3d colourized STL file back that you can bring into CAD etc. the detail of the lettuce waa amazing. This was before LIDAR on cellphones too
I’m really sceptical an insurance app can do that. And even if it does work, what’s stopping them from taking the photos from the mail (Don’t start with data protection, if they really want to they can give me a link to upload stuff; or a key to encrypt the mail)?
I agree that an app would be a better user experience. If it would refrain from sending any kind of data other than the photos. Also the photos need to be only the pictures, no EXIF or other stuff.
Also LIDAR in phones? I need to read up on this.
Edit: ah, apple only. Welp.
Oh I totally agree with protecting privacy, I was just explaining why they may want app use…because the tech is there for 3d use…not in the app persay but via cloud processing. More than likely it makes their job easy since photos go into the database with claim number and location data all filled in without them doing any labour