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It's not necessarily better for the users. I'm one of the founders of a free and open source service which simplifies the process of sending CCPA/GDPR data dele
by yoaviram 4y ago
It's not necessarily better for the users. I'm one of the founders of a free and open source service which simplifies the process of sending CCPA/GDPR data deletion requests. A common request from our users is to give them good recommendation on who to opt out from.
A new compatitor has implemented a feature where they use the Gmail API to analyse a user's email exchange (from their servers) in order to recommend who to opt out from. It's very effective, and even though I would never give a 3rd party access to my email account most people do.
Now we thought of implementing a similar feature, but from the client side (which is a bit less effective but much more privacy respecting). Now I'm not sure from what I read if we need a security audit or not, but the risk and the extra work isn't worth it for us. We're a nonprofit.
Our compatitors on the other hand are a VC backed commercial organization. They make money buy providing a service to the companies they help people opt out of. The whole opt out side is just a way of manufacturing demand, so you can guess where their loyalty lies. But because they are well funded and because sending opt out emails is basically marketing for them, it makes sense for them to pay for an audit.
At the end of the day, the user suffers.
- pas 4y agothe user already suffers by "Google" cross-financing all these free things (from search itself to mail, chrome, android, and ... go, k8s, project zero, and who knows what) and I've added the quotes because of course everyone else does that, and it trains users (and now since everyone is a user it basically conditions society) to have unrealistic expectations, skews what people value, completely fuck up the market (hard to compete with free) ... that said, in the end the user gets what it wants "opt out", and it's free for them.
- ed 4y agoWhy not run the tool clientside? You don’t need an audit unless you’re doing something with the data on your end.
- yoaviram 4y agoAre you sure about this?
- ed 4y agoYeah, it’s what I was told by a member of the verification team last year (as long as everything is clientside, you can bypass the audit). Before you build anything you should request the restricted scopes in Google’s Cloud Console as if the feature is already built, to kick off the verification process. Then you can ask a human for clarification (IIRC the exemption isn’t mentioned in the FAQ). Assuming it’s okay, you can then build the feature and resubmit your request. Best of luck!