14 ms·

Contact-tracing data harvested from pubs and restaurants being sold

ffpip 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745554 Hahahaha. Look at the first reply.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  what's interesting is the question this reply is to. it looks like lots of EU countries are requiring pub/restaurant owners now to collect guest lists and uhm "it goes down really really well with intoxicated punters /s". don't know who started it but politicians across EU seem to be copying the policy from one another in a desperate attempt to hide their incompetence.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    I mean, it's contact tracing or a shutdown..
    - walterbell 6y ago
      There's also the option of scientific or mathematical competence, instead of pandemic theater. Contact tracing was historically used at the start of a disease outbreak where it can be 100% successful. It's nearly useless later, with only partial visibility due to widespread dispersion. Even a 7x24 Person of Interest panopticon could not trace every contact across urban populations.
      - fennecfoxen 6y ago
        Given what we've seen of the response, I'm afraid this might be an unrealistic expectation.
        walterbell 6y ago
        There are tried and true historical responses to the incompetence of a few affecting the lives of millions. Even when forgotten, history shows that populations have repeatedly reinvented those responses. One effort: https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ Legal cases are underway in several countries. In one city, a $2B lawsuit against the city resulted in policy change the same week.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        > Contact tracing was historically used at the start of a disease outbreak Correct me if I'm wrong - but that's only true due to the historical turnaround time of contact tracing. Even with many cases, contact tracing at the margin can reduce $R_t$. Even in the UK, until the last 2 weeks or so, there were very few cases relative to how many there are now. Especially since covid appears to spread through a disproportionate number of super-spreading incidents compared to say the flu (ie. very right-tailed distribution in the number of people you infect with covid) means that contact tracing can be particularly effective.
        walterbell 6y ago
        What PCR cycle threshold is being used for UK tests and what is the expected false-positive rate at that threshold? Any CT value above 30 is questionable, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testin... If contact tracing is relying on flawed input data (PCR "positive" for people without symptoms), how can we avoid societal DoS of medical resources, income, and school from unnecessary contact tracing? Are there any theories on the root cause of specific people being "super spreaders"? Were those people symptomatic at the time of transmission? If not, how long was the asymptomatic transmission window when they were super-spreading, based on their traced contacts? Historically, we quarantine the sick. Covid responses have quarantined the healthy, based on claims of pre-symptomatic transmission. If we can quantify an observed transmission window (2h? 1d?) in pre-symptomatic super spreaders, before viral load reaches a threshold that causes symptoms, then we can better estimate transmission risk.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        Most of the evidence suggests that PCR specificity is very high - there are not many false positives. [0] Even if there were lots of false positives, the recent spike in cases in the UK can't be attributed to that because there is no reason the errors would be temporally correlated. The concern over PCR cycle is that you will detect people who are not spreading the disease, but those people had the virus at some point. I'd like more evidence about this societal DoS - contact tracing doesn't take medical resources and unmitigated spread consumes more medical resources, mean discretionary income (in the US at least) is higher than before the pandemic. > Are there any theories on the root cause of specific people being "super spreaders"? Yes, there are quite a few papers on the fact that the large majority of Covid-19 spread is by a very small percentage of the people who are infected, moreso than other diseases. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457918/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457918/
- kitd 6y ago
  That was about reporting to the government, which is, after all, more or less a legitimate use as a contact-tracing system. The article is about it being sold to marketers and advertisers.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    I wanted to show how the guy was downvoted for showing a legitimate concern, which turned out to be true hours later. Everything will end up sold to someone someday. Just keep your info private.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      > the guy You mean planejane9?
      - ffpip 6y ago
        Yes. Sorry for not being clear.
  - syshum 6y ago
    Sorry but I do not believe government tracing every contact I make is a "legitimate" government power Further it is unlikely that these companies would have either even attempted, or if attempted would have gotten wide spread compliance with out government mandates they collect said info. Government (as always) has created this problem
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
DPAs really need to step in here and start enforcement actions. GDPR Art. 5 (1) b prohibits abusing data for another purpose, and hiding a "consent" for that somewhere in the T&C is not sufficient. Also, due to the incredible damage such cases cause (people will provide fake data), there need to be severe penalty for such abuses - not just financial, serious jail time. Edit to add: Art. 6 GDPR is pretty clear -processing data is legal only to the extent that one of the subclauses applies. a) Something hidden in T&C isn't valid consent, b) selling the data is not necessary to fulfill the contract (serving food), c) collecting the data is but selling the data isn't necessary for compliance with the contact tracing obligation, d) selling the data isn't necessary to protect the interests of the customer, e) there is no public interest in selling the data (quite the opposite!), leaving only f) legitimate interest. Anyone claiming that will likely learn that others disagree with this being a _legitimate_ interest that is not overridden by the data subject's right to privacy.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  > there need to be severe penalty for such abuses - not just financial, serious jail time. punishment for who? those making the poorly thought out policy or the restaurant / pub owners who suddenly see themselves as the nominated enforcers of these data collection activities? rule #1 should be not to collect data you don't have a safe way to process. GDPR or not this shouldn't even be collected.
  - dpwm 6y ago
    > rule #1 should be not to collect data you don't have a safe way to process. GDPR or not this shouldn't even be collected. My understanding was that the law, at least in England, required for this data to be collected and retained.
pydry 6y ago
The UK government doesn't even trust itself with test and trace data privacy: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54328644 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54328644 Without privacy guarantees people don't use it. If people don't use it the whole system fails.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I feel like we need to extend the laws we have that govern credit reporting agencies to these other businesses that aggregate personal data. Which hopefully will put them right out of business.
  - chrismatheson 6y ago
    Are credit bureaus any better? I mean I know equifax messed up royally and I have no reason to believe that all the rest aren’t pushing on every conceivable limit of the law to maximise the profit to be made from information they scrape about me without my consent, then pay lip service to protecting it.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      You can see your credit report, challenge information you think is incorrect. And there are restrictions on what information they can collect on you. You can lock your report as well. Some types of pulls require your signature. None of these other grey market data collection firms have to do any of that. One thing I noticed is these guys are collecting data that would fall under HIPPA. Go ahead do some searches for Hepatitis C and then look at your ads on Facebook.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Without privacy guarantees people don't use it. The vast vast majority of people don't know anything about privacy guarantees and this does not factor into their decisions in any way.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
wdb 6y ago
Good reason not to visit pubs and restaurants which require reservations beforehand. This is not were my contact details are being collected fore. I think they private watchdog should look into this.
dustinmoris 6y ago
I’m proud to say that so far I have refused to give any data away and when forced I used a fake name and fake phone number. Nobody should participate in this idiotic attempt of trying to control a virus. It’s impossible. The only way back to normality is herd immunity. It will have to happen sooner or later, through natural immunity, a vaccine or most likely a combination of both. I have it rather sooner than later. Only way back to normality is to start acting normal now. Everything else is madness. Also the people who make 100% of the sacrifices are working age adults and children, basically those who are virtually at no risk of dying from this virus. Feels plain wrong that people have to give up everything for nothing in return.
- untog 6y ago
  > The only way back to normality is herd immunity. Contract tracing seems to have worked out great in many countries. And you’re entirely discounting the possibility of a vaccine here. Given that a lot of people will have to die in order to achieve herd immunity (and the science isn’t even clear on exactly how many yet, nor on the long term implications for those that survive a COVID infection) I’m not sure blanket assertions are the wisest choice right now.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > Only way back to normality is to start acting normal now. You can do that if you wish. Nobody is really stopping you in most countries. I’m not joining you though. And I would bet that I am joined by enough people that normal cannot be achieved.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    You already lost the bet judging by last six months. Will you still pay up?
- richrichardsson 6y ago
  Correct: working age adults and children, basically those who are virtually at no risk of dying from this virus. Also correct and much more important: this virus can have incredibly deleterious effects on otherwise healthy people beyond killing them. Just because it probably won't kill you doesn't mean it can't fuck you up. In fact I think I'd rather the virus kill me than leave me with permanent damage that destroys any quality of life.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/QEm2D https://archive.is/QEm2D
nixpulvis 6y ago
I honestly don't know much about Apple/Android implementations of QR code readers... Is there any fundamental issue with using one of these things to share a link to a menu or something? Many restaurants are trying to avoid menus it seems (which makes sense) and I could see a QR code making this easier for people. I don't like the idea that my OS/browser history basically knows everything about me, but I don't really see how visiting a menu is a serious problem, given that the same systems also generally have my location data too... Is the concern that people who visit restaurants are much more likely to be spreaders of COVID? Could just looking at a menu (implying visiting the restaurant) be enough to implicate me of something? I'm just left wondering in all this mess. Who watches the watchmen?
- RL_Quine 6y ago
  One of the reasons QR codes don't get used much is people simply don't know how to scan them.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    Indeed, and this is one classic problem of QR code adoption (in the US, at least), so it'll be interesting to see whether this trend of QR-code menus actually drives adoption. See also: https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > Is there any fundamental issue with using one of these things to share a link to a menu or something? There is no problem with making a QR code that links to a menu in PDF format and that would be private & secure. The problem is that the majority of those QR codes would link to a page on the restaurant's website where various trackers are embedded and Zuckerberg is not far away, and most people browse without private mode nor ad-blockers so their browser is known by those trackers.
- Closi 6y ago
  The QR codes need to send you to a name & address form for contact tracing - that's why. Scanning a code and putting in your name & address is mandatory at all eat-in places in the UK (or writing it down on a list).
recursivedoubts 6y ago
The fact that the notion of contact-tracing wasn't immediately met with howls of laughter and/or outrage is perhaps the most depressing aspect of 2020, a year with some extremely stiff competition in the "well, now, that's depressing" category.
- andybak 6y ago
  No. The fact that we didn't enforce proper privacy controls with harsh penalties is the scandal. Unless you're arguing we are innately incapable of doing that? That feels like defeatism.
  - recursivedoubts 6y ago
    Even if I thought that the corporate world could be controlled, which I don't, I admit complete defeat in expecting the intelligence community to obey any privacy requirements.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  It's a tried and tested tool in fighting disease outbreaks. What else would we do?
  - chrismatheson 6y ago
    It works if I’m just a number to the system though right?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      When you're dealing with problems that are larger than your city district - and a global pandemic definitely qualifies - you're always just a number to the system. There is no other way.
- untog 6y ago
  Eh? Contract tracing has been effective in a bunch of countries. And the framework Apple and Google worked together on works great and protects privacy. The problem is the government incompetence and/or malfeasance, not contract tracing itself.
mns 6y ago
Story from Germany. In the last 2 months I have been getting weekly something like 1-2 calls in the beginning and now, this week almost 10 calls from all kinds of numbers from various german numbers. Looking into them (online, people reporting these calls, all are ads and all kind of bullsh*t). I don't share my number, it was quite private, I never got these calls, maybe I had 5 calls in 5 YEARS, now I get more than that in one day. Why is this, I think? A lot of restaurants use lists and then just pass them to guests at the tables or make them visible for everyone writing on them. Recently there are places that offer QR codes and individual forms, and it gets better, but having these lists visible, anyone that is at the restaurant can just take a picture of the whole list. I could say that I entered a different name some time ago and I got a spam call asking "Is this different name?", but that would be illegal and I would get a fine. :)
- Fnoord 6y ago
  Provide a disposable number and e-mail address. For example, use a pre-paid 2nd SIM for this purpose and discard it after a year (mine gets cancelled after 6 months of no use). With regards to e-mail there's various solutions for that.
  - toyg 6y ago
    I’m exhausted just thinking about that. When one has to become an OPSEC professional just to get a goddamn burger without getting haunted afterwards, something is deeply wrong.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      I wholeheartedly recommend masking your email and phone number with blur/abine. Every website I have an account with literally thinks I have a different email address. You can also mask your credit card number but you have to pay extra for it so I don't. My only regret is that I do still get the spam texts and calls. I am thinking that I should somehow make my current number a google voice number or something so that there can be just an automated system that asks them to press any number to connect. Something that simple would stop 100% of my spam calls because they are all robocall recordings. I think that, as long as you're okay with paying for a service, it can be fairly easy. It's when you want to do it all yourself that you have to be an OPSEC professional. There is plenty of middle ground of paying someone who knows what they're doing to provide the ability to better mask who you are and make it expensive for someone to spam you. Make them waste their time talking to your automated answering service for a change. But yeah, it's frustratingly complicated. Some of this stuff just seems like it should be a built-in feature of modern telecommunications. My cell provider should give me the ability to present an automated message for free, and at least block numbers... mine doesn't even let me block numbers, I have to do it at the phone level so I still get voicemail messages. That kind of stuff seems like it should be considered basic service.
aidos 6y ago
Is this about the new digital menus? (Paywalled for me) Unbelievably, we went to a restaurant last weekend where there was absolutely no service so we had to use their WiFi to even see the drinks menu. Once connected, we had to go through a convoluted process to order and before even being able to place an order, I had to sign up for an account with the online service. This was before we could even order tap water. Food orders were done the regular way, with regular people, in person. They refused to take drink orders (including for water) any other way than online. Last night my wife and I went out to dinner and neither of us brought our phones (for the first time in forever). It was great. They had to give us regular menus, like the good old days.
- benlumen 6y ago
  You're lucky they let you in. Many places I've seen have made the NHS one mandatory on the door now.
  - aidos 6y ago
    To clarify, it was at a small hotel where we were staying and we were tagged in generally (the restaurant only had a few diners all of whom were staying there too).
- walterbell 6y ago
  Don't use/carry phone in restaurants. Request paper menus, they almost always have them somewhere, or posted on a wall, no matter what the policy says. Reward a different restaurant if they don't. Voting with your feet has market power.
benlumen 6y ago
I was staggered by how quickly these QR solutions were stood up. They aren't standardised and just take you to a webform and maybe a PDF of the drinks menu, but the speed was impressive. Not surprised but still disappointed to learn that they're done by opportunist cowboys. Most things like this in Britain are.
zepearl 6y ago
I created during the last ~10 years ~80 email aliases for stuff that I bought on ~80 different websites (usually in the form of <my1stname_remotecompanyname@mydomain>) and I never even once received a single spam email on those addresses/aliases. On the other hand, I received tons of spam email on my single generic email address (sometimes I'm "weak" because I don't want to login into my email admin GUI etc.. and I just use that generic/main address). I therefore guess that whoever sells addresses and/or whoever generates spam does care about the email not being traceable to a single source? (they therefore do filter the lists that they have/get?)
- Tarq0n 6y ago
  I do the same thing with emails, I just wish there was a similar solution for phone numbers. It's would be ideal for privacy as well, as phone numbers are frequently used to combine datasets across companies.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  I use a similar technique. Both VMware and New Relic have sold/lost email lists to spammers in the past couple years.
wildpeaks 6y ago
It's likely contact tracing in public spaces will remain in place long after the virus: every time a new source of tracking data exist, they don't want to relinquish it because they find additional uses for it and this is especially useful for building social graphs.
xtiansimon 6y ago
Well, paywalled. But not reading an article has never stopped me from commenting before! Haha! I’m going to file this story: third-party/corporate contract tracing apps sitting on mountains of valuable contact information ask themselves, what should we do with all this free milk? ...together with common _business_ practice from some US companies such as Walgreens and Target who require you to show ID for any purchase of alcohol or tobacco products no matter how old you are (prev age was less than 35). Of course they want to scan your ID for this, which gives them all this State processed and verified PII with extra data not related to age verification—-for free. Recall in 2013 Target had a data breach of 40m user cc and debit card info. There is some responsibility for protecting payment data (quick search says it cost Target $300m). Data on your DL, AFAIK, is unregulated, so what is the consequences of mishandling your contact info?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745554 Hahahaha. Look at the first reply.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
what's interesting is the question this reply is to. it looks like lots of EU countries are requiring pub/restaurant owners now to collect guest lists and uhm "it goes down really really well with intoxicated punters /s". don't know who started it but politicians across EU seem to be copying the policy from one another in a desperate attempt to hide their incompetence.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  I mean, it's contact tracing or a shutdown..
  - walterbell 6y ago
    There's also the option of scientific or mathematical competence, instead of pandemic theater. Contact tracing was historically used at the start of a disease outbreak where it can be 100% successful. It's nearly useless later, with only partial visibility due to widespread dispersion. Even a 7x24 Person of Interest panopticon could not trace every contact across urban populations.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      Given what we've seen of the response, I'm afraid this might be an unrealistic expectation.
      - walterbell 6y ago
        There are tried and true historical responses to the incompetence of a few affecting the lives of millions. Even when forgotten, history shows that populations have repeatedly reinvented those responses. One effort: https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ Legal cases are underway in several countries. In one city, a $2B lawsuit against the city resulted in policy change the same week.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > Contact tracing was historically used at the start of a disease outbreak Correct me if I'm wrong - but that's only true due to the historical turnaround time of contact tracing. Even with many cases, contact tracing at the margin can reduce $R_t$. Even in the UK, until the last 2 weeks or so, there were very few cases relative to how many there are now. Especially since covid appears to spread through a disproportionate number of super-spreading incidents compared to say the flu (ie. very right-tailed distribution in the number of people you infect with covid) means that contact tracing can be particularly effective.
      - walterbell 6y ago
        What PCR cycle threshold is being used for UK tests and what is the expected false-positive rate at that threshold? Any CT value above 30 is questionable, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testin... If contact tracing is relying on flawed input data (PCR "positive" for people without symptoms), how can we avoid societal DoS of medical resources, income, and school from unnecessary contact tracing? Are there any theories on the root cause of specific people being "super spreaders"? Were those people symptomatic at the time of transmission? If not, how long was the asymptomatic transmission window when they were super-spreading, based on their traced contacts? Historically, we quarantine the sick. Covid responses have quarantined the healthy, based on claims of pre-symptomatic transmission. If we can quantify an observed transmission window (2h? 1d?) in pre-symptomatic super spreaders, before viral load reaches a threshold that causes symptoms, then we can better estimate transmission risk.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        Most of the evidence suggests that PCR specificity is very high - there are not many false positives. [0] Even if there were lots of false positives, the recent spike in cases in the UK can't be attributed to that because there is no reason the errors would be temporally correlated. The concern over PCR cycle is that you will detect people who are not spreading the disease, but those people had the virus at some point. I'd like more evidence about this societal DoS - contact tracing doesn't take medical resources and unmitigated spread consumes more medical resources, mean discretionary income (in the US at least) is higher than before the pandemic. > Are there any theories on the root cause of specific people being "super spreaders"? Yes, there are quite a few papers on the fact that the large majority of Covid-19 spread is by a very small percentage of the people who are infected, moreso than other diseases. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457918/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457918/
kitd 6y ago
That was about reporting to the government, which is, after all, more or less a legitimate use as a contact-tracing system. The article is about it being sold to marketers and advertisers.
- ffpip 6y ago
  I wanted to show how the guy was downvoted for showing a legitimate concern, which turned out to be true hours later. Everything will end up sold to someone someday. Just keep your info private.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > the guy You mean planejane9?
    - ffpip 6y ago
      Yes. Sorry for not being clear.
- syshum 6y ago
  Sorry but I do not believe government tracing every contact I make is a "legitimate" government power Further it is unlikely that these companies would have either even attempted, or if attempted would have gotten wide spread compliance with out government mandates they collect said info. Government (as always) has created this problem

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

DPAs really need to step in here and start enforcement actions. GDPR Art. 5 (1) b prohibits abusing data for another purpose, and hiding a "consent" for that somewhere in the T&C is not sufficient. Also, due to the incredible damage such cases cause (people will provide fake data), there need to be severe penalty for such abuses - not just financial, serious jail time. Edit to add: Art. 6 GDPR is pretty clear -processing data is legal only to the extent that one of the subclauses applies. a) Something hidden in T&C isn't valid consent, b) selling the data is not necessary to fulfill the contract (serving food), c) collecting the data is but selling the data isn't necessary for compliance with the contact tracing obligation, d) selling the data isn't necessary to protect the interests of the customer, e) there is no public interest in selling the data (quite the opposite!), leaving only f) legitimate interest. Anyone claiming that will likely learn that others disagree with this being a _legitimate_ interest that is not overridden by the data subject's right to privacy.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> there need to be severe penalty for such abuses - not just financial, serious jail time. punishment for who? those making the poorly thought out policy or the restaurant / pub owners who suddenly see themselves as the nominated enforcers of these data collection activities? rule #1 should be not to collect data you don't have a safe way to process. GDPR or not this shouldn't even be collected.
- dpwm 6y ago
  > rule #1 should be not to collect data you don't have a safe way to process. GDPR or not this shouldn't even be collected. My understanding was that the law, at least in England, required for this data to be collected and retained.

pydry 6y ago

The UK government doesn't even trust itself with test and trace data privacy: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54328644 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54328644 Without privacy guarantees people don't use it. If people don't use it the whole system fails.

Gibbon1 6y ago
I feel like we need to extend the laws we have that govern credit reporting agencies to these other businesses that aggregate personal data. Which hopefully will put them right out of business.
- chrismatheson 6y ago
  Are credit bureaus any better? I mean I know equifax messed up royally and I have no reason to believe that all the rest aren’t pushing on every conceivable limit of the law to maximise the profit to be made from information they scrape about me without my consent, then pay lip service to protecting it.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    You can see your credit report, challenge information you think is incorrect. And there are restrictions on what information they can collect on you. You can lock your report as well. Some types of pulls require your signature. None of these other grey market data collection firms have to do any of that. One thing I noticed is these guys are collecting data that would fall under HIPPA. Go ahead do some searches for Hepatitis C and then look at your ads on Facebook.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Without privacy guarantees people don't use it. The vast vast majority of people don't know anything about privacy guarantees and this does not factor into their decisions in any way.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

wdb 6y ago

Good reason not to visit pubs and restaurants which require reservations beforehand. This is not were my contact details are being collected fore. I think they private watchdog should look into this.

dustinmoris 6y ago

I’m proud to say that so far I have refused to give any data away and when forced I used a fake name and fake phone number. Nobody should participate in this idiotic attempt of trying to control a virus. It’s impossible. The only way back to normality is herd immunity. It will have to happen sooner or later, through natural immunity, a vaccine or most likely a combination of both. I have it rather sooner than later. Only way back to normality is to start acting normal now. Everything else is madness. Also the people who make 100% of the sacrifices are working age adults and children, basically those who are virtually at no risk of dying from this virus. Feels plain wrong that people have to give up everything for nothing in return.

untog 6y ago
> The only way back to normality is herd immunity. Contract tracing seems to have worked out great in many countries. And you’re entirely discounting the possibility of a vaccine here. Given that a lot of people will have to die in order to achieve herd immunity (and the science isn’t even clear on exactly how many yet, nor on the long term implications for those that survive a COVID infection) I’m not sure blanket assertions are the wisest choice right now.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> Only way back to normality is to start acting normal now. You can do that if you wish. Nobody is really stopping you in most countries. I’m not joining you though. And I would bet that I am joined by enough people that normal cannot be achieved.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  You already lost the bet judging by last six months. Will you still pay up?
richrichardsson 6y ago
Correct: working age adults and children, basically those who are virtually at no risk of dying from this virus. Also correct and much more important: this virus can have incredibly deleterious effects on otherwise healthy people beyond killing them. Just because it probably won't kill you doesn't mean it can't fuck you up. In fact I think I'd rather the virus kill me than leave me with permanent damage that destroys any quality of life.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/QEm2D https://archive.is/QEm2D

nixpulvis 6y ago

I honestly don't know much about Apple/Android implementations of QR code readers... Is there any fundamental issue with using one of these things to share a link to a menu or something? Many restaurants are trying to avoid menus it seems (which makes sense) and I could see a QR code making this easier for people. I don't like the idea that my OS/browser history basically knows everything about me, but I don't really see how visiting a menu is a serious problem, given that the same systems also generally have my location data too... Is the concern that people who visit restaurants are much more likely to be spreaders of COVID? Could just looking at a menu (implying visiting the restaurant) be enough to implicate me of something? I'm just left wondering in all this mess. Who watches the watchmen?

RL_Quine 6y ago
One of the reasons QR codes don't get used much is people simply don't know how to scan them.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  Indeed, and this is one classic problem of QR code adoption (in the US, at least), so it'll be interesting to see whether this trend of QR-code menus actually drives adoption. See also: https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
Nextgrid 6y ago
> Is there any fundamental issue with using one of these things to share a link to a menu or something? There is no problem with making a QR code that links to a menu in PDF format and that would be private & secure. The problem is that the majority of those QR codes would link to a page on the restaurant's website where various trackers are embedded and Zuckerberg is not far away, and most people browse without private mode nor ad-blockers so their browser is known by those trackers.
Closi 6y ago
The QR codes need to send you to a name & address form for contact tracing - that's why. Scanning a code and putting in your name & address is mandatory at all eat-in places in the UK (or writing it down on a list).

recursivedoubts 6y ago

The fact that the notion of contact-tracing wasn't immediately met with howls of laughter and/or outrage is perhaps the most depressing aspect of 2020, a year with some extremely stiff competition in the "well, now, that's depressing" category.

andybak 6y ago
No. The fact that we didn't enforce proper privacy controls with harsh penalties is the scandal. Unless you're arguing we are innately incapable of doing that? That feels like defeatism.
- recursivedoubts 6y ago
  Even if I thought that the corporate world could be controlled, which I don't, I admit complete defeat in expecting the intelligence community to obey any privacy requirements.
dividedbyzero 6y ago
It's a tried and tested tool in fighting disease outbreaks. What else would we do?
- chrismatheson 6y ago
  It works if I’m just a number to the system though right?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    When you're dealing with problems that are larger than your city district - and a global pandemic definitely qualifies - you're always just a number to the system. There is no other way.
untog 6y ago
Eh? Contract tracing has been effective in a bunch of countries. And the framework Apple and Google worked together on works great and protects privacy. The problem is the government incompetence and/or malfeasance, not contract tracing itself.

mns 6y ago

Story from Germany. In the last 2 months I have been getting weekly something like 1-2 calls in the beginning and now, this week almost 10 calls from all kinds of numbers from various german numbers. Looking into them (online, people reporting these calls, all are ads and all kind of bullsh*t). I don't share my number, it was quite private, I never got these calls, maybe I had 5 calls in 5 YEARS, now I get more than that in one day. Why is this, I think? A lot of restaurants use lists and then just pass them to guests at the tables or make them visible for everyone writing on them. Recently there are places that offer QR codes and individual forms, and it gets better, but having these lists visible, anyone that is at the restaurant can just take a picture of the whole list. I could say that I entered a different name some time ago and I got a spam call asking "Is this different name?", but that would be illegal and I would get a fine. :)

Fnoord 6y ago
Provide a disposable number and e-mail address. For example, use a pre-paid 2nd SIM for this purpose and discard it after a year (mine gets cancelled after 6 months of no use). With regards to e-mail there's various solutions for that.
- toyg 6y ago
  I’m exhausted just thinking about that. When one has to become an OPSEC professional just to get a goddamn burger without getting haunted afterwards, something is deeply wrong.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    I wholeheartedly recommend masking your email and phone number with blur/abine. Every website I have an account with literally thinks I have a different email address. You can also mask your credit card number but you have to pay extra for it so I don't. My only regret is that I do still get the spam texts and calls. I am thinking that I should somehow make my current number a google voice number or something so that there can be just an automated system that asks them to press any number to connect. Something that simple would stop 100% of my spam calls because they are all robocall recordings. I think that, as long as you're okay with paying for a service, it can be fairly easy. It's when you want to do it all yourself that you have to be an OPSEC professional. There is plenty of middle ground of paying someone who knows what they're doing to provide the ability to better mask who you are and make it expensive for someone to spam you. Make them waste their time talking to your automated answering service for a change. But yeah, it's frustratingly complicated. Some of this stuff just seems like it should be a built-in feature of modern telecommunications. My cell provider should give me the ability to present an automated message for free, and at least block numbers... mine doesn't even let me block numbers, I have to do it at the phone level so I still get voicemail messages. That kind of stuff seems like it should be considered basic service.

aidos 6y ago

Is this about the new digital menus? (Paywalled for me) Unbelievably, we went to a restaurant last weekend where there was absolutely no service so we had to use their WiFi to even see the drinks menu. Once connected, we had to go through a convoluted process to order and before even being able to place an order, I had to sign up for an account with the online service. This was before we could even order tap water. Food orders were done the regular way, with regular people, in person. They refused to take drink orders (including for water) any other way than online. Last night my wife and I went out to dinner and neither of us brought our phones (for the first time in forever). It was great. They had to give us regular menus, like the good old days.

benlumen 6y ago
You're lucky they let you in. Many places I've seen have made the NHS one mandatory on the door now.
- aidos 6y ago
  To clarify, it was at a small hotel where we were staying and we were tagged in generally (the restaurant only had a few diners all of whom were staying there too).
walterbell 6y ago
Don't use/carry phone in restaurants. Request paper menus, they almost always have them somewhere, or posted on a wall, no matter what the policy says. Reward a different restaurant if they don't. Voting with your feet has market power.

benlumen 6y ago

I was staggered by how quickly these QR solutions were stood up. They aren't standardised and just take you to a webform and maybe a PDF of the drinks menu, but the speed was impressive. Not surprised but still disappointed to learn that they're done by opportunist cowboys. Most things like this in Britain are.

zepearl 6y ago

I created during the last ~10 years ~80 email aliases for stuff that I bought on ~80 different websites (usually in the form of <my1stname_remotecompanyname@mydomain>) and I never even once received a single spam email on those addresses/aliases. On the other hand, I received tons of spam email on my single generic email address (sometimes I'm "weak" because I don't want to login into my email admin GUI etc.. and I just use that generic/main address). I therefore guess that whoever sells addresses and/or whoever generates spam does care about the email not being traceable to a single source? (they therefore do filter the lists that they have/get?)

Tarq0n 6y ago
I do the same thing with emails, I just wish there was a similar solution for phone numbers. It's would be ideal for privacy as well, as phone numbers are frequently used to combine datasets across companies.
WalterGR 6y ago
I use a similar technique. Both VMware and New Relic have sold/lost email lists to spammers in the past couple years.

wildpeaks 6y ago

It's likely contact tracing in public spaces will remain in place long after the virus: every time a new source of tracking data exist, they don't want to relinquish it because they find additional uses for it and this is especially useful for building social graphs.

xtiansimon 6y ago

Well, paywalled. But not reading an article has never stopped me from commenting before! Haha! I’m going to file this story: third-party/corporate contract tracing apps sitting on mountains of valuable contact information ask themselves, what should we do with all this free milk? ...together with common _business_ practice from some US companies such as Walgreens and Target who require you to show ID for any purchase of alcohol or tobacco products no matter how old you are (prev age was less than 35). Of course they want to scan your ID for this, which gives them all this State processed and verified PII with extra data not related to age verification—-for free. Recall in 2013 Target had a data breach of 40m user cc and debit card info. There is some responsibility for protecting payment data (quick search says it cost Target $300m). Data on your DL, AFAIK, is unregulated, so what is the consequences of mishandling your contact info?