4 ms·

> Look no further than the GDPR-required cookie notices every European website has. You know, the popup boxes you only look at long enough to find the "I accept

> Look no further than the GDPR-required cookie notices every European website has. You know, the popup boxes you only look at long enough to find the "I accept" button? That's not meaningful consent. The good thing about the GDPR in this context, is that it grants you the right to be forgotten; in the case of the OP: 1. It would not be legal for a company to collect information on you without your consent (if you are using their site, they are the data Controller). 2. It would not be legal for Facebook to share this data with another company, without listing the data collector as a Processor. 3. If you later discover that a company has shared your data to a broker, you can have them delete that data after the fact. 4. You're allowed to opt out of any collection that isn't required to provide the service; it's not permissible to just claim "I need to transmit your PII to this data broker in order to serve you news articles".) So at least we have remedies for the cases where a site is later found to be acting outside of the norms that folks assume when they click through the terms, unlike in the US where you cannot really put the genie back in the bottle once your data has leaked. I agree with your point that ideally people would pay attention to the permissions that apps/sites requested, and closely analyzed them, but it's quite clear to me that most humans don't care enough about privacy to take these actions ahead of time. So insasmuch as GDPR lets you fix those mistakes retroactively, it's providing a benefit.

esotericn 7y ago
People do pay attention to the permissions but it's very often intentionally obfuscated. Opting in is instant whereas clicking 'no' comes up with spinners, complex trees of options, whatever else (i.e. it's not actually opt in; the default, fast path has the box checked, so it's opt out, because the active action is to have to opt out).
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  The most ridiculous way are the popups labeled something like 'choices' wherein you have to click every single one of up to 200 companies to NO/OFF, by setting a cookie on their sites, which often doesn't work, because overloaded, or intentionally? That is schizophrenic!

esotericn 7y ago

People do pay attention to the permissions but it's very often intentionally obfuscated. Opting in is instant whereas clicking 'no' comes up with spinners, complex trees of options, whatever else (i.e. it's not actually opt in; the default, fast path has the box checked, so it's opt out, because the active action is to have to opt out).

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
The most ridiculous way are the popups labeled something like 'choices' wherein you have to click every single one of up to 200 companies to NO/OFF, by setting a cookie on their sites, which often doesn't work, because overloaded, or intentionally? That is schizophrenic!