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To have a valid train ticket on your phone (for those without printer), you are also required to accept the google or apple terms of service and privacy policy.

by Aachen 5y ago

To have a valid train ticket on your phone (for those without printer), you are also required to accept the google or apple terms of service and privacy policy. You can download a pdf ticket, but the data matrix on there is only valid if you print it out! Last year a big hosting company in the Netherlands introduced a requirement for existing customers to accept the Google TOS/PP before being allowed to log in. Support of course did not see the issue, like literally could not find it. I had to send them screenshots with markings before they saw that the google captcha they had introduced includes some small gray links. This might not even be such a big deal if the privacy policy explained the data sharing that will actually happen. Rather, there is one fairly short document that applies to literally everything from hosted email to captchas to hardware in your home. Thus it has to say that they will use all gathered data for basically any purpose. Something tells me this cannot possibly be legal (iirc GDPR requires specific and understandable language), but that's the state of affairs. (Another interesting example was me asking in a chat with ~100 people whether anyone had read the TOS update yet from our broker—the place where you keep your pension money and stuff. The only reaction I got was "anyone reads that? xD".) Kinda bothers me that everyone is just going along with any terms for convenience. It's ripe for abuse and doesn't have to be this way.

DharmaPolice 5y ago
The TOS thing has surely reached the point where it's simply not reasonable to expect people to read them. Put another way - how many people read every single terms of services / privacy policy / end user licence agreement they see in full? I would be shocked if it's more than one in a million. Depending on the services you use (and how frequently they update them) this could require dozens of hours of reading every single week (and many more hours of analysis to fully understand them if that's even possible without training). Legislation asking (indirectly) that companies shove even more of these "Click here to read our cookie policy" type messages into everyone faces has only made the problem worse.
- Aachen 5y ago
  > Legislation asking (indirectly) that companies shove even more of these "Click here to read our cookie policy" type messages into everyone faces has only made the problem worse. Disagree here. It's not gotten worse, it's gotten more visible. It's only ethical to ask people before tracking them, so any site should have done this already. This legislation forces businesses to act more honestly towards users in this regard. Businesses impacted then take this and frame it in a manner of "we're very sorry that your government forces us to annoy you with this, but if you'd just sign here we'll be right out of your way..." and the vast majority of techies swallow it because it is, indeed, annoying to have to sign away privacy again and again. It doesn't have to be this way. See the omission of a cookie wall on various sites that don't do anything that requires special consent.
ezfe 5y ago
>To have a valid train ticket on your phone (for those without printer), you are also required to accept the google or apple terms of service and privacy policy. You can download a pdf ticket, but the data matrix on there is only valid if you print it out! How does this even work? QR codes don't magically change when they're printed.
- schroeding 5y ago
  They are just not accepted by the conductor. But those policies can also change in the (IMO) "right" direction, e.g. the German Deutsche Bahn changed their policies a few years ago and now digital tickets are accepted[1] in PDF form on digital devices, while they previously were not. [1] https://community.bahn.de/faqs/muss-ich-mein-online-gekauftes-ticket-ausdrucken https://community.bahn.de/faqs/muss-ich-mein-online-gekaufte... (german source, just saying that it can be used in the app or in PDF form on your smartphone, tablet or notebook)
  - ezfe 5y ago
    Fascinating, the way the original comment was written I thought it didn't show up or something
- Aachen 5y ago
  > How does this even work? QR codes don't magically change when they're printed. Tell me about it. Or, wait, tell them!
m-s 5y ago
It's fine to present a pdf, as long as it's legible and the code can be scanned. > Het E-ticket dat wordt geladen op een mobiele telefoon, tablet of laptop is alleen geldig als vervoerbewijs als het duidelijk leesbaar weergegeven kan worden op de mobiele telefoon, tablet of laptop. https://www.ns.nl/binaries/_ht_1553092893605/content/assets/ns-nl/voorwaarden/voorwaarden-e-ticket-mobieleticket.pdf https://www.ns.nl/binaries/_ht_1553092893605/content/assets/...
- Aachen 5y ago
  Literally on the PDF ticket it says it is only valid when printed out in full or when loaded in the app that can only be gotten legally through google or apple.
- yunohn 5y ago
  Yeah I’ve shown PDFs before, and as long as the QR code is scannable the NS conductor doesn’t care.
thingification 5y ago
> To have a valid train ticket on your phone (for those without printer), you are also required to accept the google or apple terms of service and privacy policy. You can download a pdf ticket, but the data matrix on there is only valid if you print it out! It seems that requirements to "consent" to TOS for things like major transport systems (government or not) or government health services (NHS services in the UK for example) just aren't consent in anything but some technical legal sense. > Kinda bothers me that everyone is just going along with any terms for convenience. It's ripe for abuse and doesn't have to be this way. I think it's not so much convenience as a change in the laws of the game? With TOS presented human-to-human, people in the past would have been more likely to react in a human way to the person offering them the TOS, businesses and governments would be constrained. Even if they got TOS in the post, there was a human in the loop to complain to and argue with. With TOS online, it's a fait accompli, which changes the costs to both parties.

by Aachen 5y ago

DharmaPolice 5y ago

The TOS thing has surely reached the point where it's simply not reasonable to expect people to read them. Put another way - how many people read every single terms of services / privacy policy / end user licence agreement they see in full? I would be shocked if it's more than one in a million. Depending on the services you use (and how frequently they update them) this could require dozens of hours of reading every single week (and many more hours of analysis to fully understand them if that's even possible without training). Legislation asking (indirectly) that companies shove even more of these "Click here to read our cookie policy" type messages into everyone faces has only made the problem worse.

Aachen 5y ago
> Legislation asking (indirectly) that companies shove even more of these "Click here to read our cookie policy" type messages into everyone faces has only made the problem worse. Disagree here. It's not gotten worse, it's gotten more visible. It's only ethical to ask people before tracking them, so any site should have done this already. This legislation forces businesses to act more honestly towards users in this regard. Businesses impacted then take this and frame it in a manner of "we're very sorry that your government forces us to annoy you with this, but if you'd just sign here we'll be right out of your way..." and the vast majority of techies swallow it because it is, indeed, annoying to have to sign away privacy again and again. It doesn't have to be this way. See the omission of a cookie wall on various sites that don't do anything that requires special consent.

ezfe 5y ago

schroeding 5y ago
They are just not accepted by the conductor. But those policies can also change in the (IMO) "right" direction, e.g. the German Deutsche Bahn changed their policies a few years ago and now digital tickets are accepted[1] in PDF form on digital devices, while they previously were not. [1] https://community.bahn.de/faqs/muss-ich-mein-online-gekauftes-ticket-ausdrucken https://community.bahn.de/faqs/muss-ich-mein-online-gekaufte... (german source, just saying that it can be used in the app or in PDF form on your smartphone, tablet or notebook)
- ezfe 5y ago
  Fascinating, the way the original comment was written I thought it didn't show up or something
Aachen 5y ago
> How does this even work? QR codes don't magically change when they're printed. Tell me about it. Or, wait, tell them!

m-s 5y ago

It's fine to present a pdf, as long as it's legible and the code can be scanned. > Het E-ticket dat wordt geladen op een mobiele telefoon, tablet of laptop is alleen geldig als vervoerbewijs als het duidelijk leesbaar weergegeven kan worden op de mobiele telefoon, tablet of laptop. https://www.ns.nl/binaries/_ht_1553092893605/content/assets/ns-nl/voorwaarden/voorwaarden-e-ticket-mobieleticket.pdf https://www.ns.nl/binaries/_ht_1553092893605/content/assets/...

Aachen 5y ago
Literally on the PDF ticket it says it is only valid when printed out in full or when loaded in the app that can only be gotten legally through google or apple.
yunohn 5y ago
Yeah I’ve shown PDFs before, and as long as the QR code is scannable the NS conductor doesn’t care.

thingification 5y ago

> To have a valid train ticket on your phone (for those without printer), you are also required to accept the google or apple terms of service and privacy policy. You can download a pdf ticket, but the data matrix on there is only valid if you print it out! It seems that requirements to "consent" to TOS for things like major transport systems (government or not) or government health services (NHS services in the UK for example) just aren't consent in anything but some technical legal sense. > Kinda bothers me that everyone is just going along with any terms for convenience. It's ripe for abuse and doesn't have to be this way. I think it's not so much convenience as a change in the laws of the game? With TOS presented human-to-human, people in the past would have been more likely to react in a human way to the person offering them the TOS, businesses and governments would be constrained. Even if they got TOS in the post, there was a human in the loop to complain to and argue with. With TOS online, it's a fait accompli, which changes the costs to both parties.