5 ms·

People keep saying this, and to some extent it's very true, I've witnessed it myself in companies. But I mean, the aim of GDPR was never to make resonable data

People keep saying this, and to some extent it's very true, I've witnessed it myself in companies. But I mean, the aim of GDPR was never to make resonable data collection that is done in a safe way by "the good guys" hard. The question is rather how many companies that pre-GDPR stored my data in ways I (as a technical person) would consider unsafe, or used it in ways I would consider "bad", that have changed their ways. My local bowling alley still stores my password in plaintext and use an outdated Wordpress-plugin for bookings, and Google stills knows as much about my behaviour online and IRL.

rsynnott 7y ago
> and Google stills knows as much about my behaviour online and IRL. It probably doesn't, as fewer websites will be so blasé about pumping every piece of metadata they can think of into Adwords and Analytics APIs these days.
- bryan_w 7y ago
  I mean Google doesn't need to know every bike website you've been to, just that you've been to A bike website for them to know that you're into bikes. So even if some sites are pulling out their GA, some won't and that's good enough for Google
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    They can't build as accurate of a model with a smaller subset of your activity as compared to a more complete one.
    - renewiltord 7y ago
      Google has lots of first party traffic. That's their big strength. Same with Facebook. That's why between the two of them they eat 2/3rds of every new ad dollar.
luckylion 7y ago
> The question is rather how many companies that pre-GDPR stored my data in ways I (as a technical person) would consider unsafe, or used it in ways I would consider "bad", that have changed their ways. My local bank has, post-GDPR, started adding Google Analytics to their logged in client section. I've complained to them ("but we use anonymizeIp()") and to the data protection officials here in Germany ("how did you even see that? Can you explain again what is the issue?" and then they dropped silent). Nobody cares. Really.
- candiodari 7y ago
  You mean your government's enforcers are incapable of understanding the internet and the law, never mind the interplay between those two (because the wages the government pays guarantees that such people won't be working there). Like everywhere else. And this will never change. The only thing the GPDR allows for is for governments to bury and destroy companies they don't like, which at this point is mostly the big internet companies, but that won't last.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    > Like everywhere else. > > And this will never change. I am quite used to hearing this from people who oppose GDPR, however I am yet to hear at least a single strong point made about what they would do instead. Apathy due to not being able to do best is incredibly self-defeating. In my own personal take on this I think this is exactly what Google et al want you to do: being afraid to do anything because you haven’t yet found a way to perfectly resolve the situation. It’s a policy issue, and thus if you knew how to resolve it in an ideal way there would be nothing to resolve in the first place. We’re not dealing with number theory where some brilliant mind can suddenly imagine a mental framework that will resolve our all sufferings.
    - candiodari 7y ago
      Why would I be scared of Google/Fb/Amazon or other companies ? They don’t have power and can be sued effectively. Government departments cannot and have privileged acces to my data and keep getting caught letting their agents abuse it for the most trivial of reasons. If Amazon violates my privacy I basically get better suggestions for a birthday present for my daughter a week before her birthday. What I fear is the government passing my medical file to health care, police and insurerance companies. What I fear is an incompetently recorded and therefore wrong home moving record getting passed to the IRS and that resulting in an investigation, blocking my accounts. What I hate is a wrong camera match to my face resulting in the police wrongfully arresting or convicting me. What I fear is the police agggressively investigating me because they have some random tiny bit of “evidence” such as my cell phone being close to a crime, or because I dialed a wrong number that was involved in a drug case. I therefore want the ability to permanently edit and erase my own medical record, as well as any other government record on me, from school data to ex spouses when a divorce is final. The ex spouse is allowed to have proof. City hall is not. I want the government itself to be liable for passing any info even to the police. I want contact tracing to be impossible even if it makes police 5% cheaper at the cost of allowing for great abuses. I do not want laws that cannot be enforced against government departments, I want it to be erased. Compared to those threats, I don’t really care about private companies knowing I watched porn yesterday evening. Without effective protection for the Crown Jewels of my privacy I don’t care about tiny details.
lukevdp 7y ago
Isn’t the whole point that you can stop them from collecting your data and also get them to delete your data if you want? Presumably you could get Google to delete all of your data. Is this not the case?
- notechback 7y ago
  Yes.
- filleokus 7y ago
  I don't actually know, honestly, what the point was/is exactly. Partly to affect long-term change in how personal data is viewed (less "gold mine, let's collect it all" and more "potentially toxic asset, let's collect as little as possible"). But also partly deletion and opt-out also of course, and that probably works well, for those who use it. But with the huge implementation cost (cited by PwC as upwards of 150 billion USD in the U.S alone [0]), I wonder what the price per delete request or opt-out is. [0]: https://truthonthemarket.com/2019/05/24/gdpr-after-one-year-costs-and-unintended-consequences/ https://truthonthemarket.com/2019/05/24/gdpr-after-one-year-...
notechback 7y ago
But Google now offers you the possibility to turn some things off, as well as to receive a copy of your data and delete it. Same for Facebook. This is an achievement of the GDPR.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Wait.. for Google at least, that was always offered. At least since 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP4NI5o-WUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP4NI5o-WUw

rsynnott 7y ago

> and Google stills knows as much about my behaviour online and IRL. It probably doesn't, as fewer websites will be so blasé about pumping every piece of metadata they can think of into Adwords and Analytics APIs these days.

bryan_w 7y ago
I mean Google doesn't need to know every bike website you've been to, just that you've been to A bike website for them to know that you're into bikes. So even if some sites are pulling out their GA, some won't and that's good enough for Google
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  They can't build as accurate of a model with a smaller subset of your activity as compared to a more complete one.
  - renewiltord 7y ago
    Google has lots of first party traffic. That's their big strength. Same with Facebook. That's why between the two of them they eat 2/3rds of every new ad dollar.

luckylion 7y ago

> The question is rather how many companies that pre-GDPR stored my data in ways I (as a technical person) would consider unsafe, or used it in ways I would consider "bad", that have changed their ways. My local bank has, post-GDPR, started adding Google Analytics to their logged in client section. I've complained to them ("but we use anonymizeIp()") and to the data protection officials here in Germany ("how did you even see that? Can you explain again what is the issue?" and then they dropped silent). Nobody cares. Really.

candiodari 7y ago
You mean your government's enforcers are incapable of understanding the internet and the law, never mind the interplay between those two (because the wages the government pays guarantees that such people won't be working there). Like everywhere else. And this will never change. The only thing the GPDR allows for is for governments to bury and destroy companies they don't like, which at this point is mostly the big internet companies, but that won't last.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  > Like everywhere else. > > And this will never change. I am quite used to hearing this from people who oppose GDPR, however I am yet to hear at least a single strong point made about what they would do instead. Apathy due to not being able to do best is incredibly self-defeating. In my own personal take on this I think this is exactly what Google et al want you to do: being afraid to do anything because you haven’t yet found a way to perfectly resolve the situation. It’s a policy issue, and thus if you knew how to resolve it in an ideal way there would be nothing to resolve in the first place. We’re not dealing with number theory where some brilliant mind can suddenly imagine a mental framework that will resolve our all sufferings.
  - candiodari 7y ago
    Why would I be scared of Google/Fb/Amazon or other companies ? They don’t have power and can be sued effectively. Government departments cannot and have privileged acces to my data and keep getting caught letting their agents abuse it for the most trivial of reasons. If Amazon violates my privacy I basically get better suggestions for a birthday present for my daughter a week before her birthday. What I fear is the government passing my medical file to health care, police and insurerance companies. What I fear is an incompetently recorded and therefore wrong home moving record getting passed to the IRS and that resulting in an investigation, blocking my accounts. What I hate is a wrong camera match to my face resulting in the police wrongfully arresting or convicting me. What I fear is the police agggressively investigating me because they have some random tiny bit of “evidence” such as my cell phone being close to a crime, or because I dialed a wrong number that was involved in a drug case. I therefore want the ability to permanently edit and erase my own medical record, as well as any other government record on me, from school data to ex spouses when a divorce is final. The ex spouse is allowed to have proof. City hall is not. I want the government itself to be liable for passing any info even to the police. I want contact tracing to be impossible even if it makes police 5% cheaper at the cost of allowing for great abuses. I do not want laws that cannot be enforced against government departments, I want it to be erased. Compared to those threats, I don’t really care about private companies knowing I watched porn yesterday evening. Without effective protection for the Crown Jewels of my privacy I don’t care about tiny details.

lukevdp 7y ago

Isn’t the whole point that you can stop them from collecting your data and also get them to delete your data if you want? Presumably you could get Google to delete all of your data. Is this not the case?

notechback 7y ago
Yes.
filleokus 7y ago
I don't actually know, honestly, what the point was/is exactly. Partly to affect long-term change in how personal data is viewed (less "gold mine, let's collect it all" and more "potentially toxic asset, let's collect as little as possible"). But also partly deletion and opt-out also of course, and that probably works well, for those who use it. But with the huge implementation cost (cited by PwC as upwards of 150 billion USD in the U.S alone [0]), I wonder what the price per delete request or opt-out is. [0]: https://truthonthemarket.com/2019/05/24/gdpr-after-one-year-costs-and-unintended-consequences/ https://truthonthemarket.com/2019/05/24/gdpr-after-one-year-...

notechback 7y ago

But Google now offers you the possibility to turn some things off, as well as to receive a copy of your data and delete it. Same for Facebook. This is an achievement of the GDPR.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Wait.. for Google at least, that was always offered. At least since 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP4NI5o-WUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP4NI5o-WUw