I always use a VPN and have it set to always connect me to a different server. As a result, many pages make me jump through hoops to use them. For example, coingecko almost always makes me do a captcha before allowing me in the site. But that's not the worst.

When I buy from Amazon, if I forget to turn my VPN off first, they will ask me to confirm my details and confirm my password, even if they already asked that when I logged in, and will often still insist on sending something via SMS to my phone, even though I am already using 2FA and already put my code in when I confirmed everything. A lot of the times when this happens, my bank will also lock the credit card and I have to reconfirm everything with them. Such a headache... hence I try to remember to turn off my VPN whenever I buy something online to avoid the headache.

I had this happen once even when I decided not to buy what was in my shopping cart and cancelled the order. The bank had disabled my credit card without any warning, because evidently Amazon informs them even when I just put something in my cart without buying it and they thought that was suspicious because, again, VPN. I didn't discover the card was disabled until I tried to use it at a store. That was fun.

I appreciate that both Amazon and my bank takes security seriously, but there is a point where they make it so painful that it makes me not want to use any part of the system at all.

The sooner we can get away from banks, the better. Getting away from places like Amazon would be even better, but one thing at a time, eh?