4 ms·

So, the part of the GDPR the bank was unable to comply with here is the "right to rectification". That suggests that the bank made a 'mistake' when it recorded

by rocqua 5y ago

So, the part of the GDPR the bank was unable to comply with here is the "right to rectification". That suggests that the bank made a 'mistake' when it recorded the name in its system as well as it could. I don't think that should count as a mistake. The information in the bank's system is as good as it could be, so there is nothing to rectify. It feels weird to me when privacy legislation turns out to require supporting UTF-8. I think something in the legal process went wrong here.

dmitriid 5y ago
> It feels weird to me when privacy legislation turns out to require supporting UTF-8. No. It requires you to store data correctly. And in the case of a bank storing data incorrectly could have potential ramifications (think two different people, one with diacritics and without). The law doesn't care whether you use UTF-8 or a manually written translation table, or a 15th-century printing press
- Volundr 5y ago
  > And in the case of a bank storing data incorrectly could have potential ramifications (think two different people, one with diacritics and without). Surely this situation wouldn't cause any issues though right? If they are relying on names as unique identifiers, they've got far bigger problems than a users name being spelled incorrectly.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    No, but banks interact with people - both customers and employees. People interpret names. Errors like this could be used to, for example, impersonate someone (by tricking an employee), or deny someone service (e.g. via a clerk who behaves like a zombie, a protein peripheral of the bank's computer system).
  - gspr 5y ago
    Issues? Depends on what you mean. Maybe not practical issues, but I for sure would be offended if my bank refused to use my actual name. I find this whole ordeal delightful, and applaud the intention of the GDPR and the ways the courts upheld it in this case.
dTal 5y ago
Yes. Provided there is a defined protocol when handling unrepresentable characters in the system, like è -> e, the information is not "inaccurate". It is merely imprecise. You could imagine explicitly putting ? instead, which would carry strictly less information - but would still be "accurate" in the sense that it doesn't assert a falsehood.
utucuro 5y ago
Considering that the P in GDPR stands for Protection, not Privacy, the scope of the legislation is significantly broader. If we look at the ISO standard for information security, ISO 27001, apart from the confidentiality and accessibility of data, it considers integrity as one of the three things to consider when classifying data and similarly, the GDPR expect PID to be handled in a manner that assures correctness at the very least. In the specific case of this bank, like everyone else, they were expected to update systems unable to comply with the legislation within the grace period and yet it seems that they were unwilling or unable to update or replace a system that is incapable of achieving data integrity in a matter as basic as the name of a customer.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  But it's just not true that everyone else was expected to do this. Credit card names are still running on ASCII! (I'm also, to be frank, highly skeptical that the court would have taken such a hard line if the customer had been complaining that Chinese characters aren't supported or that his Arabic name should be written right to left.)
  - Daneel_ 5y ago
    That's not quite the issue at hand though. In that situation, the bank should be opening an account with the correct name then issuing a credit card with an ASCII-converted name. This would be acceptable because the personal information is stored correctly, it's just represented in simplified form on the card. The issue in the article is that the bank couldn't even open an account with the correct name. I suspect this will be fixed by storing the correct name in an external system and using an ID number or similar to refer to the customer on EBCDIC systems.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      That all sounds reasonable to me as a matter of customer-friendly system design, but it's not obvious to me why it would satisfy the court here. If using a customer's properly formatted name is a GDPR requirement, it seems like it'd be required in all cases; GDPR doesn't have any sort of "nbd if it's too hard to comply" clause.

by rocqua 5y ago

dmitriid 5y ago

> It feels weird to me when privacy legislation turns out to require supporting UTF-8. No. It requires you to store data correctly. And in the case of a bank storing data incorrectly could have potential ramifications (think two different people, one with diacritics and without). The law doesn't care whether you use UTF-8 or a manually written translation table, or a 15th-century printing press

Volundr 5y ago
> And in the case of a bank storing data incorrectly could have potential ramifications (think two different people, one with diacritics and without). Surely this situation wouldn't cause any issues though right? If they are relying on names as unique identifiers, they've got far bigger problems than a users name being spelled incorrectly.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  No, but banks interact with people - both customers and employees. People interpret names. Errors like this could be used to, for example, impersonate someone (by tricking an employee), or deny someone service (e.g. via a clerk who behaves like a zombie, a protein peripheral of the bank's computer system).
- gspr 5y ago
  Issues? Depends on what you mean. Maybe not practical issues, but I for sure would be offended if my bank refused to use my actual name. I find this whole ordeal delightful, and applaud the intention of the GDPR and the ways the courts upheld it in this case.

dTal 5y ago

Yes. Provided there is a defined protocol when handling unrepresentable characters in the system, like è -> e, the information is not "inaccurate". It is merely imprecise. You could imagine explicitly putting ? instead, which would carry strictly less information - but would still be "accurate" in the sense that it doesn't assert a falsehood.

utucuro 5y ago

Considering that the P in GDPR stands for Protection, not Privacy, the scope of the legislation is significantly broader. If we look at the ISO standard for information security, ISO 27001, apart from the confidentiality and accessibility of data, it considers integrity as one of the three things to consider when classifying data and similarly, the GDPR expect PID to be handled in a manner that assures correctness at the very least. In the specific case of this bank, like everyone else, they were expected to update systems unable to comply with the legislation within the grace period and yet it seems that they were unwilling or unable to update or replace a system that is incapable of achieving data integrity in a matter as basic as the name of a customer.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
But it's just not true that everyone else was expected to do this. Credit card names are still running on ASCII! (I'm also, to be frank, highly skeptical that the court would have taken such a hard line if the customer had been complaining that Chinese characters aren't supported or that his Arabic name should be written right to left.)
- Daneel_ 5y ago
  That's not quite the issue at hand though. In that situation, the bank should be opening an account with the correct name then issuing a credit card with an ASCII-converted name. This would be acceptable because the personal information is stored correctly, it's just represented in simplified form on the card. The issue in the article is that the bank couldn't even open an account with the correct name. I suspect this will be fixed by storing the correct name in an external system and using an ID number or similar to refer to the customer on EBCDIC systems.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    That all sounds reasonable to me as a matter of customer-friendly system design, but it's not obvious to me why it would satisfy the court here. If using a customer's properly formatted name is a GDPR requirement, it seems like it'd be required in all cases; GDPR doesn't have any sort of "nbd if it's too hard to comply" clause.