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This all comes back to the two-faced saying of one thing loud and publicly while in the small print buried in legalese proclaiming something else. That practice

This all comes back to the two-faced saying of one thing loud and publicly while in the small print buried in legalese proclaiming something else. That practice needs to be illegal. It is basically fraud.

rmc 10y ago
One aspect of European data protection is "freely given, informed consent". You can only do what the user has consented to. If a company loudly says "We'll never share it" and the ToS says "We can share it", then what has the user consented to? You could make a case that the user is consenting the loud proclamations. EU data protection law doesn't allow dense legalise behind a click-through as "consent". So maybe EU law is already doing what you say it should do. :)
- pluma 10y ago
  German law basically says that terms of service and end user license agreements can't contain surprises. If a service explicitly states it doesn't do certain things, the user hasn't consented to the service doing those things, even if the ToS or EULA contain a snippet in fine print saying the service may actually do these things after all. This already bit WhatsApp when they tried to ban users for using alternative clients. A German court ruled while they may block those alternative clients, banning the user is unexpected because most other services don't have that kind of policy on alternative clients. So they could have still kept that policy but they would have to make it unambiguously clear and draw attention to it outside the ToS or EULA because it's something users wouldn't expect from that kind of service.
- codingmyway 10y ago
  The EU is way ahead in protecting consumers. Thankfully I am an EU citizen (for now, #Brexit) but unless other major economies follow corporations will keep trying.
davidf18 10y ago
Part of the "product/service" is the protection of privacy that was promised and since breeched. It is because of network effects that make it hard for users that understand privacy and value it to move to another service such as Signal. If there were that form of "user liquidity" then our privacy would not be violated for users would simply switch to a product that valued their privacy.

rmc 10y ago

One aspect of European data protection is "freely given, informed consent". You can only do what the user has consented to. If a company loudly says "We'll never share it" and the ToS says "We can share it", then what has the user consented to? You could make a case that the user is consenting the loud proclamations. EU data protection law doesn't allow dense legalise behind a click-through as "consent". So maybe EU law is already doing what you say it should do. :)

pluma 10y ago
German law basically says that terms of service and end user license agreements can't contain surprises. If a service explicitly states it doesn't do certain things, the user hasn't consented to the service doing those things, even if the ToS or EULA contain a snippet in fine print saying the service may actually do these things after all. This already bit WhatsApp when they tried to ban users for using alternative clients. A German court ruled while they may block those alternative clients, banning the user is unexpected because most other services don't have that kind of policy on alternative clients. So they could have still kept that policy but they would have to make it unambiguously clear and draw attention to it outside the ToS or EULA because it's something users wouldn't expect from that kind of service.
codingmyway 10y ago
The EU is way ahead in protecting consumers. Thankfully I am an EU citizen (for now, #Brexit) but unless other major economies follow corporations will keep trying.

davidf18 10y ago

Part of the "product/service" is the protection of privacy that was promised and since breeched. It is because of network effects that make it hard for users that understand privacy and value it to move to another service such as Signal. If there were that form of "user liquidity" then our privacy would not be violated for users would simply switch to a product that valued their privacy.