How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/gdpr_risk_to_the_duopoly/

by cpeterso • 9 years ago

371 346 9 years ago

AJRF• 9 years ago

I'm going to read thoroughly through the terms and conditions and get a case going in European Courts when this comes into play, because you know for a FACT Google and Facebook will put in some vague term to let them collect data for "future" improvement of the service. Watch and see.

phatbyte• 9 years ago

I believe that's what EU is trying to achieve:

“A purpose that is vague or general, such as for instance ‘Improving users’ experience’, ‘marketing purposes’, or ‘future research’ will – without further detail – usually not meet the criteria of being ‘specific’”

kbart3• 9 years ago

Vague terms and conditions is even against current EU laws which mandates to state specific use cases for your personal data.

fixermark4• 9 years ago

So, how long until this one also also gets neutered when European governments realize they can't even bring their own websites into compliance with the new law? ;)

ISL• 9 years ago

The Man will often exempt himself.

james_pm• 9 years ago

The provisions are already there, just waiting to be used. National security, secrecy, etc.

the_mitsuhiko21• 9 years ago

Which websites do you have in mind here?

kartan2• 9 years ago

So, how long until this one also also gets neutered when European governments realize they can't even bring their own websites into compliance with the new law? ;)

I have worked for 2 big tech companies in Europe. And in both, there is a big effort to make sure that they are compliant with the legislation. I see everyone taking it seriously. Why do you think that it is going to fail?

Even the stupid, really really stupid, cookie warning was implemented everywhere. What does this different? (A part of being actually a good law that protects citizens from indiscriminate tracking).

fixermark4• 9 years ago

Regarding the cookie warning, I was mostly thinking about this infographic humorously describing the delta between what was originally intended and what was eventually implemented [https://silktide.com/app/uploads/2013/01/Cookie-Law-infograp...]. As well as the ICO back-pedaling from explicit consent to implied consent (https://www.out-law.com/articles/2013/january/ico-to-change-...).

I take it the actual implementation went a bit more smoothly than the infographic suggests?

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

They'd have a tough time doing so; this is a Regulation (as opposed to a Directive) which means the legislation is written by the EU and applies in all EU territories automatically without being transcribed into national legislation.

That means in order for it to be changed then the European Commission would have to propose a new law, and the European Parliament and Council of the European Union will have to agree to it. The former doesn't really care about whether national governments can get on with their jobs or not.

Animats• 9 years ago

Site will not render properly with Google Analytics blocked. Web site renders with text on top of text. Grey on black text. Is this some fake site by a Google front intended to give this idea a bad reputation?

prophesi• 9 years ago

I use uMatrix on Chrome and have every non-pagefair.com script blocked, including google analytics. Not seeing any site rendering issues here. Perhaps it's your browser?

hedora5• 9 years ago

My adblocker blocks the base url of the page. Maybe there is some common adblock regexp that matches stuff on this site.

danarmak3• 9 years ago

Nor can they deny access to their services to users who refuse to opt-in to tracking.[1]

Taken literally this means it's illegal to provide a service in exchange for tracking. Can someone elaborate on whether this is true and what else it applies to or what else other business models are made outright illegal?

dordoka3• 9 years ago

I guess that sentence is referencing article 43. IANAL.

See http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5419-2016-IN...

danarmak3• 9 years ago

Article 43:

In order to ensure that consent is freely given, consent should not provide a valid legal ground for the processing of personal data in a specific case where there is a clear imbalance between the data subject and the controller, in particular where the controller is a public authority and it is therefore unlikely that consent was freely given in all the circumstances of that specific situation. Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.

(My italics.) The second sentence seems clear: "consent is presumed not to be freely given" if the service could be provided without the consent. Which means consent cannot be traded in exchange for an unrelated service, like e.g. webmail.

I'm not sure what the relation between the two sentences is. Does the second one ("consent is presumed...") apply only to the cases addressed by the first, i.e. "where there is a clear imbalance"? Or are they independent?

A_No_Name_Mouse2• 9 years ago

The legislation itself refers to this in article 7.4: "When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract. " I don't think it is forbidden, but you'd have a hard time explaining why consent is freely given despite the fact that access to a web site is denied if you don't give consent.

FridgeSeal5• 9 years ago

Please excuse my excitement, but this really has made my day.

The "forced consent" so many apps and services use is scummy at best and I have no qualms about this tactic being denied at regulatory level.

Inb4 someone comes back with an argument about advertising/tracking being the "only" way some things can survive, then I won't miss them, and if they want options then they should allow for a reasonably priced usage fee, so that we can escape this "ads/tracking or nothing" business model.

modulus1• 9 years ago

Does it say they can't nag users relentlessly until they click 'accept'?

CobrastanJorji• 9 years ago

The critical question for both businesses is whether users will click “yes”, when asked to consent.

Yes, users will click yes on basically anything. Facebook could put up a message that says "In order to proceed, click yes to give us half the money in your checking account" and the majority of Facebook users will still click through. Look at EU cookie warnings. Did any of those warnings noticeably impact anybody's traffic after the first week?

mattmanser• 9 years ago

Cookie warnings is a bad example as it was widely acknowledged by anyone vaguely techy that they'd got it completely wrong from the start.

ben_jones• 9 years ago

Eh, couldn't you make the argument that the Cookie warnings showed that a government body could meaningfully change the experience of the internet? As small as the warnings are, had anything like it been done before?

dx0344• 9 years ago

The difference is that cookie warnings only inform you, they don't offer a choice. The excessive use of personal data is something that most businesses don't need for their core purpose and something that users are certainly worried about (at least in Europe).

Silhouette19• 9 years ago

Yes, users will click yes on basically anything.

No, they won't. When the EU imposed new consumer protection rules not so long ago, it resulted in having to put some scary-looking legalese directly on your sales funnel pages if you were supplying digital content, even if said legalese was of no practical value to anyone including your customer. That alone was enough to hurt conversions, even if you didn't require something like a token checkbox to be ticked before continuing. The GDPR compliance requirements are potentially on an entirely different scale.

hohenheim3• 9 years ago

There is a big difference between cookie warning and GDPR. You could not op-out of cookie storage. You either used the service and accepted that they store cookies. Or you closed the tab and left.

GDPR prevents the companies from discontinuing service for users whom wish not to be tracked.

laksjd• 9 years ago

Clicking yes might not even be necessary: I recently went to a laywer-oriented event (IANAL) that discussed the GDPR and it had a cheerful talk about "Alternatives to Consent"

The talk listed all the possible ways the law allows you to store/manipulate user data without requiring explicit consent... There are a shocking number and iirc they apply basically whenever you have a direct consumer relationship with some company.

jsty• 9 years ago

IANAL, just currently wading through GDPR material.

As I see it the most relevant processing conditions for companies offering a service and storing / processing data without gaining explicit consent are likely to be 6(1)(b) - Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with the data subject or to take steps to enter into a contract 6(1)(c) - Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation

My understanding is that these are far from a blank cheque to store / manipulate arbitrary personal information. Specifically, the storage and use of data in question must be provably fundamental to either provision of the relevant service in (b), or meeting legal obligations in (c).

So yes, a company providing you a service will gain the right to store certain customer details demonstrably necessary to provide that service - say hosting your email. It won't however allow arbitrary use of such data to e.g. provide targeted advertising, since such use is not fundamentally required for performance of the service. This would require a specific opt-in (and from what I recall, a failure to opt-in cannot interfere with the provision of said service - not so clear on this however).

dingo_bat4• 9 years ago

This is not even the fault of users. As a user, I want to get to the webpage I'm opening. I'll do whatever it takes to quickly reach there. I think "what's the worst they could have written". After all I haven't paid them anything. Expecting free users of Facebook to analyze a prompt on screen and legally consent to it is utter stupidity. Most people believe that clicking a checkbox isn't even legally binding.

In other words I know that clicking on a Facebook dialog box saying "you agree to give us 50% of your income" is meaningless and so I will click on it and use the website.

hedora5• 9 years ago

Sweet. How to I inform google that I moved to europe (even though I didn't)? VPN tunnel?

s17n2• 9 years ago

If you want to opt out of data collection, it's not that hard, just go to google.com/privacy

confounded• 9 years ago

What does this definition of "opt-out" mean?

curiousDog• 9 years ago

But GDPR is more than that right? I can tell Google to delete everything it knows about me, not just start opting out.

twhb• 9 years ago

Google stores many of those settings as cookies, which means your opt-out only applies to one browser on one device for a limited time.

Nala_Alan3• 9 years ago

I wouldn't trust Google in anything, especially opt-outs.

hedora5• 9 years ago

I don't login and regularly clear my cookies (pretty much whenever the first targeted ad gets past my adblocker).

I wonder if there is a browser extension that will auto-opt-out of all 1,000,000 (or whatever) trackers on the internet each time you clear cookies.

0x27081990• 9 years ago

Google and Facebook will find a way. Problem are small/young startups

goodplay2• 9 years ago

Beginning with a partial solution to this problem is better than doing nothing at all. This sad state of affairs has gone on for far too long.

FridgeSeal5• 9 years ago

The more I think about it, the more I feel that if you're a startup, thinking about this from the get-go won't hurt you and won't really cost you.

What I mean by that is, it's easier to build your db and backups to comply with these laws before you have anything set in stone, than after you have any meaningful amount of personal data. Like, if you organise your backups and db to happily be able to handle removal of requested data before you accrue too much technical debt/inertia then you're going to be ahead of anyone who has to retrofit, which in many ways actually puts you at an advantage.

Also, I for one won't be mourning the loss of the business model that parasitically lives of exploiting user data.

kbart3• 9 years ago

What problems? So you can't collect all the data on your costumers and do with it as you see fit? And when it gets leaked just say: "Oops, sorry"? If for some startups taking private data seriously is a "problem", I want to see them burn in fire.

Sephr• 9 years ago

The author believes that users have little incentive to allow Google to provide personalized Google Search results.

I don't think any technical-oriented people in this thread would agree that they have "little incentive" to allow Google Search personalization. When I turn off Google Search personalization, I get inferior search results that are less likely to be what I was searching for.

If you don't want your results personalized, there is an option in the search results to turn personalization off.

The problem I have with this law is that Google will need to default to non-personalized results and then prompt users if they want personalization. Google probably doesn't want to increase UI friction, so they will most likely just disable personalization and not prompt to enable. This will result in less-engaged users and inferior search results for the average EU citizen.

balls187• 9 years ago

I don't think any technical-oriented people in this thread would agree that they have "little incentive" to allow Google Search personalization.

I disagree. I turned off Search personalization a long time ago, and haven't looked back.

Jordrok• 9 years ago

Same here. I do most of my browsing in an incognito mode-like environment (so no persistent cookies or sign in to my Google account), and even when I am signed in I turned off the search history a long time ago.

Nala_Alan3• 9 years ago

I don't even use Google, I use my own searx instance instead. Completely unpersonalized, and completely private. And I feel that it's better this way, cause privacy does matter.

austinheap2• 9 years ago

I just use my old Britannica CDs. Completely private.

flukus• 9 years ago

The personalization is what made me switch to DDG. Google shows me too many results of what I searched for yesterday or the results of that similar search I just made. The more google tries to show results for what I think it's searching for instead of what I type into the search box the worse it gets for me.

DDG might sometimes show me some rust proofing results when I'm search for programming related things, but it least it doesn't ignore my refined searches.

shadowtree• 9 years ago

And if you think GDPR is a toothless joke, let's take a look at the defined fine stucture.

It is pretty simple, only 3 levels (strikes for the fellow Americans):

Strike 1 - Stern warning letter

Strike 2 - 2% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE

Strike 3 - 4% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE (or 20mil EUR, whichever is higher)

And now you know why GDPR is a board level topic. Keep in mind that the EU/US Safe Harbor agreement got axed due to a lawsuit of a single student from Vienna against Facebook. So all you need is a single pissed off German customer you ignored when asking for their data report card and you're fucked.

For startups - GDPR is like Y2K at the time, a GOLDMINE. So much opportunity to sell solutions, from real to snake oil. GDPR compliance is already and will continue to trigger a massive wave of investment.

Enjoy :)

xd• 9 years ago

Strike 3 - 4% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE (or 20mil EUR, whichever is higher)

Why would they impose a 20M limit and not stick to 4% revenue irregardless of it...

edit: I'm not sure that the down voting is about.. it's still a limit, a limit that means a company turning over 0-500M will pay up to a 20M fine.. not so bad the closer you get to 500M but not so great if you're a small company, especially so as the regulation is so open to the "law of unintended consequences" right now and only larger companies will have the funds / man power to navigate it.

ATsch• 9 years ago

You seem to misunderstand, 20M is not a limit, but a minimum

downrightmike• 9 years ago

A lower limit, a minimum. If 4% is 20.1M+ they'll pay that.

jpk• 9 years ago

I understand your point, but I still think it's wrong. The minimum on the third strike is so a little-to-no revenue startup or shell company or something doesn't willingly abuse data because the fine will be 4% of nothing.

spyspy• 9 years ago

Big consulting firms have been milking this thing for a long time already.

mnm12• 9 years ago

I wish more penalties were like this. This sounds great. Now these companies will finally have real incentive to comply. Hell, the percentages should be higher. That's the only way to enforce regulations. Otherwise, they'll just pay a puny fine, American style, and not do shit.

usaphp• 9 years ago

It's a percent from revenue not from profit. So 5% from google revenue is a lot

golemotron• 9 years ago

I've never understood what would happen if Google or Facebook just ignored EU regulations, claimed that they were not under the EU's jurisdiction, and ignored any judgement. Would the EU erect a great firewall at that point?

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

Hell, the percentages should be higher.

The European Parliament wanted a higher percentage but that got negotiated down during discussions with the Council of the European Union.

grabeh5• 9 years ago

The reality is that the 2% or 4% figure depends on which part of the GDPR you have breached and isn't a tiered approach. Breaches of core requirements (for example valid processing grounds) will attract a 4% fine straightaway technically speaking.

Art 83 covers the different triggers.

Having said that there are various schools of thought around levels of potential fines, including from different data protection authorities in the EU.

Considering the ICO in the UK is yet to levy a maximum fine despite egregious violations is at least one factor to suggest fines will not increase dramatically.

Also there are not only increased fines to consider but an increased focus on compensation to data subjects in the event of a violation of their rights (together with an evolving case law to support that in the UK at least).

pascalxus2• 9 years ago

In addition to the solutions you mentioned, This might create more jobs at facebook and google as compliance will take a huge amount of effort.

I predict, lawyers are going to make a lot of money on this.

taysic10• 9 years ago

It may be doable for big companies but does this mean startups will be more likely to delay entry to the EU market?

throwaway_9123• 9 years ago

Throwaway account.

I have national sales responsibilities for one of the majors. Think IBM/Microsoft/Oracle/etc leading a sales team of 74 reps.

You'd be surprised at how LITTLE sales we've generated from GDPR. We've been providing free GDPR assessments for the past 1.5 years for over 200 accounts as lead gen opportunity and very little sales have resulted.

It all boils down to companies simply don't believe the fines will be enforced given just how expensive the fines are.

And since GDPR doesn't go into affect until May 2018, companies are just waiting and seeing what happens.

It's really hard to sell GDPR because it's essentially an insurance policy. Why spend $5m on software and another $5m in services ($10m combined) if your total fine is only $20m. Do you as a company have a 50% chance of getting fined? If not, then roll the dice and not buy a solution.

rsp1984• 9 years ago

I understand it that $20m is just the minimum on strike three, not the upper bound (there is none I understand).

For a company that has the means to spend $10m on software and services I'd think that 4% of global revenue would be clearly the larger sum.

the_mitsuhiko21• 9 years ago

The talk on GDPR has definitely only really taken off very recently. While a year ago it was a few people that brought it up, the reality of the situation is now slowly kicking in as European customers are asking for this.

tyfon• 9 years ago

I work in a (small) bank, but we are already quite far in implementing GDPR.

Most of it is done by our internal development team or the core system providers we use. No need for external consultants.

From what I can tell, the whole banking industry is busy implementing this, at least here in Norway.

The fines are real..

existencebox• 9 years ago

Speaking as an eng for MSFT, across multiple orgs, GDPR is certainly taken very seriously here.(Probably safe for me to say given [1]) I would expect the big players will all follow through as a CYA because they'd be the first to be made an example of. I think a sister post's comment on lack of sales was probably accurate, since my above reasoning likely doesn't apply to "most small companies" and the effort to comply properly is certainly not negligible, even if you've already assessed the changes that need to be made (frankly that seems like it might be the easy part if you can leverage someone with background on the nitty gritty of the legislation). It will be "interesting" to see how this pans out.

[1]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/TrustCenter/Privacy/gdpr/def...

davedx2• 9 years ago

Yeah, both my work and my wife's companies are taking it very seriously. The point is at the moment, we all think we can handle it internally: legal is very busy doing prep work that will result in requirements across the business, some of which will result in development work (I'm in the IT department). My wife is busy documenting and preparing requirements too.

What kind of companies do you sell to? Maybe they are actually trying to handle it internally too? What do they say?

simonh3• 9 years ago

The fine doesn't absolve you of responsibility for complying. If you're fined you have to pay up AND you have to comply. Otherwise they'll just fine you again, as they did to Google.

amelius• 9 years ago

It all boils down to companies simply don't believe the fines will be enforced given just how expensive the fines are.

It sounds like a goldmine for the EU government. If they install a group of people chasing for noncompliant companies, they will pay for themselves.

77pt77• 9 years ago

Strike 3 - 4% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE (or 20mil EUR, whichever is higher)

20mil EUR even for zero revenue?!

Espressosaurus• 9 years ago

Turns out it's a bad idea to ignore regulators enforcing the law.

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

Yes, but who exactly is processing personal data with zero revenue?

cm21877• 9 years ago

Keep in mind that the EU/US Safe Harbor agreement got axed due to a lawsuit of a single student from Vienna against Facebook.

Almost every US supreme court decision come from a single guy challenging something. Are you suggesting that under a certain size, one shouldn't be allowed to sue in court?

occultist_throw• 9 years ago

I believe they were trying to make a point that it doesn't take a whole government, or a class of people to be wronged to change things in court.

It takes a single person whom was wronged. That's it.

Silhouette19• 9 years ago

For startups - GDPR is like Y2K at the time, a GOLDMINE.

Unless you're a start-up that handles personal data, in which case it's another bureaucratic overhead that also carries a risk of draconian penalties if you make a mistake, even if you have perfectly sensible reasons for working with that data and you're not doing anything at all surprising or dubious with it.

Of course, the EU has form for this, given its similar approach to both consumer protection and VAT rules in recent years. It does seem to have an unhelpful habit of imposing regulations at big business scale to deal with big business scale problems, but not considering that both of these may be wildly disproportionate for smaller businesses.

riffraff4• 9 years ago

a risk of draconian penalties if you make a mistake, even if you have perfectly sensible reasons for working with that data and you're not doing anything at all surprising or dubious with it.

GDPR explicitly mentions that "warnings" and "periodic data audits" should be considered measures to take before the fine is applied.

It also says[0] that when deciding on the fine, due regard shall be given to nature, gravity, and duration of the infringement; degree of cooperation, intention or negligence, actions previously taken by the authorities, previous infringements, nature of data etc.

It seems unlikely that anyone in good faith would get screwed by this.

[0] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...

taysic10• 9 years ago

Why is it Global revenue? It seems presumptive for the EU to want a share of their global revenue rather than EU revenue

StavrosK• 9 years ago

I assume it's because it's less easy to game, rather than say "oops we made all our money in Switzerland that year".

johnvonneumann• 9 years ago

Big companies make a habit of pushing their tax liabilities to the most favourable jurisdiction. As the other comment said, they would take the piss.

marsRoverDev• 9 years ago

Also, it is worded to say that it's 4% of global revenue for your parent company.

So there is no setting up an offshored tiny company to wear the liability - your parent company is on the hook, wherever that money may reside.

AndrewKemendo4• 9 years ago

I'll eat my shoe if a regulator ever gets even 2% total global revenue out of any of the top 100 software companies based on this.

In reality a bunch of small shops are going to go bankrupt because they don't have a "GDPR implementation" position filled and they didn't do some report properly.

bad_user• 9 years ago

The EU just fined Google €2.42 billion in an antitrust settlement for manipulating search results.

Go get the salt.

kbart3• 9 years ago

EU institutions are not as toothless or easily bribed as national ones, so I'm sure there will be big clashes in near future.

mdip3• 9 years ago

    For startups - GDPR is like Y2K at the time, a GOLDMINE. So much opportunity to sell solutions, from real to snake oil. GDPR compliance is already and will continue to trigger a massive wave of investment.

I'll start by saying that I have found myself leaning in favor of this law -- I've made a much longer comment about it and won't rehash it, but I wanted to make sure my statements that followed weren't taken as a blanket anti-GDPR but rather a devil's advocate response.

I take issue with the quoted statement because it ignores the downside for startups[0]. Companies like Google, Facebook et. al., have the money and time to hire teams of lawyers to find a way to work around these regulations in a manner that maximises their ability to continue tracking while minimising their risk in getting smacked by the hand of the law. Getting hauled off to court won't bankrupt them and they have the legal teams to probably win regularly enough. Even barring that, they have the finances to adjust their business to be fully compliant (in whatever degree business adjustments require) without going bankrupt.

Joe's Advertising Supported Free Service does not. Joe's not going to start his own ad network and start mining personal data for it -- it's way too expensive to try to compete with Google/Facebook (and it was already way too expensive to do it, before). If he does, he's the one who's going to get hit with the second and third strike; probably from that "single pissed off German customer".

Investing in firms that touch this space will be met with far more skepticism. I wouldn't be surprised if any company that simply asks for a user ID and password won't face a little scrutiny from investors, at least until the regulatory atmosphere is understood (I doubt it'll be that extreme for terribly long, but one bad court ruling/fine laid out where it wasn't expected could change that). The cost of establishing many, many kinds of companies will now increase because the risks are high enough that going to market without having your legal bases covered on this one. That money has now been shifted to a business who -- potentially -- is selling snake-oil (and startups are going to be more likely to do business with that snake-oil salesman since they'll probably also be the least expensive).

Then there's the "unintended consequences". Here's a crazy hypothetical, but a lesser variation of it is plausible if this were a US law: Some individual exercises his free-speech rights and chucks something up on the Internet that has a bunch of horrible things on it, say, like 'a guide on how to slaughter and prepare kittens for healthy and inexpensive dinners'. Some kid reads it and kills/eats his neighbor's cat. The guy didn't do anything illegal, really, but his web host knocks him off the web and people are calling for blood. He happens to use an ad-network, but doesn't, himself, collect personal information. However, this ad-network does, and at one point was nailed under this law. He uses the ad-network, so some overzealous prosecutor figures out a way to bring it in front of a judge that he's responsible for what this third-party did and should also be prosecuted. At the height of outrage, a jury isn't hard to find to connect the dots[1].

[0] And hey, that's fine, you're an internet commenting individual just like me -- we don't have to present both sides of the story -- that's the replier's job.

[1] Yeah, I took that a little far, but I think back to when "The Columbine Massacre" happened and everyone believed it was FPS video games that warped those evil children's "precious little minds". It took all of two seconds to call for banning violent video games (constitution be dammed), many idiotic and ultimately overturned laws were passed, and if there was some way to haul the developers who wrote the game off to jail (I think they were blaming DOOM at the time), it would have been possible within those first few weeks.

AndrewKemendo4• 9 years ago

Yea this exactly, all this does is make sure that the big players stay big.

It also gives a REALLY good pathway for any big company to take down a smaller company that is competing on data.

yorwba2• 9 years ago

Joe's Advertising Supported Free Service does not. Joe's not going to start his own ad network and start mining personal data for it -- it's way too expensive to try to compete with Google/Facebook (and it was already way too expensive to do it, before).

Since it was already too expensive to roll his own, Joe's site will simply include content from whatever ad network he chooses. All he has to do is make sure that the network is GDPR compliant. If he didn't think to do that, the first warning should give him the necessary time to find a different ad network or to specially handle EU-based customers.

Your "kitten meal" example also wouldn't work, since the first violation doesn't carry a fine, and if the website has been taken down, there is no possibility of a second violation.

So I think the changes won't affect ad-supported businesses themselves all that much, they will simply lead to a restructuring of the supporting infrastructure to become compliant. In the worst case, every website will have a huge "opt in to tracking" modal you have to click, like the cookie policy.

bflesch5• 9 years ago

I see this as yet another tax on (European) startups who have to invest even more resources into regulatory compliance.

This prohibition of freely using all available data will create great arbitrage opportunity for the shadow economy, and will have a net negative effect on innovation.

I think prohibition has very bad side effects, and that MORE transparency is the way forward in politics, economy, and also society. This includes allowing businesses to use all the data they can get their hands on. People can produce infinitely more data than any google can realistically process.

I cannot understand why people who are otherwise for transparency and against prohibition are celebrating this as a big win against FB/AMZ/GOOG, as those players can easily shell out another $10M here and there to be compliant with this regulatory monster.

usgroup• 9 years ago

This is about ethics primarily.

If you don't care about ethics then expect an unethical economy.

bflesch5• 9 years ago

I don't think it is about ethics, it is about control. We as European businessmen were and still are unable to generate the same kind of innovation as the US, and now they try to solve the problem by pulling down the US on our level (at least the parts concerning the EU market).

I think this is the wrong approach, EU should try to make it easier for European businesses to compete with US-based ones.

But in the end we have another layer of bureaucracy on top of all the things a US startup has to worry about, and those mostly non-technical/non-innovative people want to be a part of the picture.

the_mitsuhiko21• 9 years ago

I see this as yet another tax on (European) startups who have to invest even more resources into regulatory compliance.

This also affects American companies and the degree it affects you primarily depends on how much of your business model was depending on you doing nefarious things with customer data.

bflesch5• 9 years ago

Of course this affects american companies, as the whole thing is primarily designed as a weapon for the EU against US dominance in the consumer space.

The big problem for the EU is that consumers actually choose the best product in a free market (the internet of free services), and they overwhelmingly decided to use the US-based options.

All the framing as "nefarious" is propaganda, consumers choose freely the option they value the most. If someone else comes along providing more value than google or facebook everyone would switch in an instant.

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

Could American companies simply state that European citizens are not allowed to use their service due to stringent compliance laws, and add a checkbox stating something like, 'My residence is not subject to EU jurisdiction?'

Yeah, yeah, "giving up lots of customers," but if you're a small startup it might be attractive to target a smaller problem space to start with. Also, everyone does this already with, "I am older than 13" boxes since it's broadly illegal to collect childrens' data; you probably wouldn't even have to do any verification as long as you don't wilfully stick your fingers in your ears.

taysic10• 9 years ago

depends on how much of your business model was depending on you doing nefarious things with customer data

From what's written in the article it seems it impacts anyone who is doing anything with data, which is basically every startup.

Nullabillity2• 9 years ago

as those players can easily shell out another $10M here and there to be compliant with this regulatory monster.

Sounds like you missed the part where the fines are based on a percentage of your global revenue.

yohui• 9 years ago

Parent comment is talking about the cost of compliance, not fines for non-compliance.

loup-vaillant• 9 years ago

I'm not sure "transparency" means what you think it means.

Transparency is when powerful entities (companies, governmental bodies, elected officials…) disclose stuff about themselves. Allowing a business as big as Google or Facebook to use all their user's data as they see fit is not transparency, it's mass surveillance.

pascalxus2• 9 years ago

It's true. GOOG/FB have the economies of scale to deal with this. Start ups don't. This will hurt start ups more than it does GOOG/FB.

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

It's not hard to comply.

Don't collect data you don't need. Don't collect data you don't have explicit consent (or a legitimate need) for. Don't use data collected for one purpose for another purpose.

That'll get you almost all of the way to complying.

hohenheim3• 9 years ago

If the start-up is to monetize due to lack of privacy laws, then this regulation is specifically meant to prevent such companies.

If they are the middle man with no dependence on private information, then yes it will cost them to be compliant but it won't break their business model.

AndyMcConachie• 9 years ago

As an EU citizen I don't really care about a definition of innovation that involves monetizing my data against my will or knowledge. That's not innovation it's exploitation. So I won't miss your business.

There are all kinds of 'innovations' that don't involve collecting data about me, and the companies creating these kinds of products don't have to care one lick about the GDPR.

dingo_bat4• 9 years ago

Considering the usage of Google in Europe I'd say you're in a small minority. Most people agree that what Google has done is innovation.

closeparen9• 9 years ago

HN is most definitely not compliant. Are you happy to see it go?

cm21877• 9 years ago

To be honest, the Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google of this world aren't the one that have been leaking the most personal data. It's the smaller companies and startups that have been leaking personal data at an alarming rate. What we are beginning to see now is the regulatory backlash. Regulations are inconvenient, expensive, create barriers to entry (ask bankers!). But the current pace of gathering then leaking of personal information is just unacceptable and unsustainable. Between the two evils, I am not sure I prefer the current statu quo.

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

Leaking PII isn't the main issue. Processing of PII is. And Facebook et. al. do a lot of that.

raimue• 9 years ago

In case you are puzzled the same way as me, GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation.

mankash666• 9 years ago

Are all companies beholden to this or those with legal entities in Europe.

For instance, can a Chinese company with ZERO legal presence in the EU completely ignore these requirements? The internet has no real borders, after-all.

the_mitsuhiko21• 9 years ago

can a Chinese company with ZERO legal presence in the EU completely ignore these requirements?

Same with an American company with no legal presence in the EU. However quite a few things require you to establish one. Likewise if you are engaging in B2B activities your European customers will ask you for it.

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

Yes.

If you process the personal data people in the EU then you have to comply:

Article 3

Territorial scope

1. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.

2. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to:

(a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or

(b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.

3. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law.

_pdp_• 9 years ago

This has nothing to do with the size of your company/startup and it has nothing to do with regulatory compliance. It is a pretty simple at its core: if your company/startup gets breached and as a result PII data leaked, then you are liable for the penalty according to the general rules. I don't think anybody will argue this is a bad thing. If anything, it will help companies to be a little bit more careful with what sort of data they collect because frankly, at the moment almost every company is perhaps guilty of collecting far too much personal data under the assumption that one day it may become useful. If you collect PII data then you are liable for damages if you happen to mishandle it.

So here is how to avoid the GDPR penalties.

1. Get compliant - it is pretty much ISO27001 and it will cost you money 2. Don't collect excessive PII data and if you do, store it securely - after all it is a very basic ask 3. Avoid collecting PII data at all cost - think of it as another form of PCI

Frankly, there is no need to panic.

Chaebixi• 9 years ago

How might one make sure their accounts get classified those that fall under the scope of the GDPR regulation? Would it be sufficient to set your location to an EU country?

antoncohen3• 9 years ago

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies.

Take the right to be forgotten. First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't like the content, but that is what the EU has ruled should happen.

I get the desire to have a company forget about you, and remove all the personal information they have. It makes sense from a personal standpoint. But how do you do it technically?

If you follow GDPR strictly you would need to be able to purge the data from your backups. Now most backups are considered immutable, so you aren't going to do that, meaning you need a way to ensure that "forgotten" users never get restored.

But how do you even delete the live data? Does the tech company you work for have the ability to delete all traces of a user from their system, cleaning severing all relationships with other objects in your system? Do you have the ability to retrieve everything you know about a specific user, and provide it to them? You will need to write the code to do this.

There is a good chance your little startup that isn't cash flow positive will have to spend $1 million of its VC money on becoming GDPR compliant.

Do you sell a SaaS service to businesses, and those businesses send you their customer's data? Then you are the processor and they are the controller. Cool, less for you to do, sort of. Except that controller must agree to every sub-processor you use. Want to switch from AWS to GCP? You can only do it if all your customers agree. Want to use try out a new metrics or logging service? If it will have any PII you can't do it without customer (controller) permission.

You will basically need to hire full-time compliance officers to deal with this. The big tech companies already have compliance officers, but GDPR is so massively invasive to businesses that even small companies now need compliance officers.

nvarsj• 9 years ago

it comes at a huge cost to tech companies

Doesn't it just affect companies which rely heavily on lack of privacy for monetisation? I think that's sort of the point - that your business should not rely on tracking individuals and selling that information without their consent to gov/private bodies. It's obviously a huge change, since so many big tech players rely on this to make profits. But the internet will be a much nicer place for everyone else if right to privacy is protected.

Silhouette19• 9 years ago

Doesn't it just affect companies which rely heavily on lack of privacy for monetisation?

No, unfortunately not.

taysic10• 9 years ago

"the application of the GDPR will prevent them from using these personal data for any further purpose unless the user permits."

This seems incredibly broad from the article and would touch nearly every startup. Maybe there are limits on the businesses affected? Otherwise I'm not sure how one could formally define "rely heavily on lack of privacy for monetisation."

closeparen9• 9 years ago

Doesn't it affect everyone with a user account system, storage of user-generated data, error logging, usage and performance metrics, etc?

HN itself is illegal under EU regulations because you can't delete old comments, and we know that the admins know how many RPS they are getting but I haven't specifically opted in to using records of my HTTP requests for traffic monitoring.

bflesch5• 9 years ago

Thanks for phrasing your concerns about this regulation in such a nice way. I tried to articulate it in an earlier post but it was very controversially received.

Overall, this will be yet another additional challenge for EU-based startups in comparison with their US peers and keep armies of lawyers busy.

austinheap2• 9 years ago

I just want to point out it keeps armies of US engineers employed too. The amount of work I've had for EU companies implementing their EU regulations as a US tech worker is confusing and funny.

This is just another opportunity for easy money if you're in the states and enjoy/don't mind compliance work.

M2Ys4U10• 9 years ago

If a US company wants to handle the data of an EU citizen then they'll have to comply or be fined as well.

And if you're complying because you want users in the EU, then you might as well design your system to comply for everybody. And that's a Good Thing as more privacy is better.

bjl2• 9 years ago

You will basically need to hire full-time compliance officers to deal with this. The big tech companies already have compliance officers, but GDPR is so massively invasive to businesses that even small companies now need compliance officers.

Or they could, I don't know, just not collect that data in the first place.

hayksaakian• 9 years ago

What if you run an online payroll service? This type of SaaS obviously requires you to collect personal information.

Do you think it's reasonable to have to get individual user approval to move their data from one database vendor to another?

antoncohen3• 9 years ago

It isn't that simple. When people think about these privacy laws that is what they think about, some evil corporation tracking tons of private info.

The company I work for has no ads. It does no analytics on personal info. It does nothing you would care about. What it is is a SasS product for businesses. We aren't the controller, so we don't need permission from end users, our customers need to get permission from their customers. But end users can ask our customer (the controller) to delete data, and our customer can ask us (the processor) to delete it.

Fine, we now have an engineer building GDPR features instead of features that benefit our customers. Oh well. But it isn't as clear a win for end users as people make it out to be when they only come at it from an anti-Google and anti-Facebook perspective.

It sounds good in theory, but things like Article 28 certainly make it harder to move quickly.

The processor shall not engage another processor without prior specific or general written authorisation of the controller. In the case of general written authorisation, the processor shall inform the controller of any intended changes concerning the addition or replacement of other processors, thereby giving the controller the opportunity to object to such changes.

ubernostrum• 9 years ago

First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't like the content

I think a lot of EU people (I'm not one) would disagree with you here. The notions of privacy and of the goals of the criminal-justice system in several parts of Europe are radically different from the notions your "common sense" position is based on, which means that what seems "common sense" to them seems ludicrous to you, and vice-versa.

closeparen9• 9 years ago

It may surprise some HN readers that 1984 was in fact not about a lack of pricacy, but about the government's ability to edit the past. Privacy had a minor role next to the ability to redefine the truth. This is a deeply scary thing. I hope the gleefully self-righteous dystopia builders in this thread get to suffer the full pain of the "right to edit other people's memories" world they are building.

Joeri• 9 years ago

You need to research the right to be forgotten as it applies to news articles, it doesn't work in the way you describe.

And as far as this stuff being difficult to do, sure, but isn't it worth doing? Why shouldn't a customer have a say which cloud provider hosts their data? Why shouldn't we be able to make sure no data is kept about us after we stop using a service? Like with anything novel in software it only seems hard to do because we haven't done it, but in a ground up design it's not that hard to add gdpr compliance, and a few years down the line this stuff will be business as usual.

You don't need a compliance officer, but you do need a security officer, and their job now also involves data lineage, not just data security. You already should have that person if you're building a SaaS solution.

antoncohen3• 9 years ago

You need to research the right to be forgotten as it applies to news articles, it doesn't work in the way you describe.

I was referring to Google vs. Costeja, which I realize isn't GDPR, but an EU court did rule that way.

You don't need a compliance officer, but you do need a security officer

I strongly believe that compliance and security are two very different things, that are only slightly related. They come at it from a very different perspectives. A security engineer should be doing threat modeling and protecting against threat vectors. A compliance officer may consult a security engineer, but ultimately their job is to check boxes to make sure regulations are followed. I think compliance staff are more appropriately part of a legal team than an engineering team.

That isn't to say compliance officers aren't useful. Having a strong compliance voice can be great. I've seen companies without a compliance officer reduce security because an auditor told them regulations required something. A good compliance officer would have been able to push back against the auditors, pointing out what regulations actually require, and working with the security engineers to come up with a solution that meets regulations and actually improves security.

cm21877• 9 years ago

I believe that in many countries there has been laws for a while mandating the deletion of personal data after a certain number of years (for instance I believe this is the case in banking). This is not new and if your backup system does not comply with regulations, it's probably more of a design problem.

Silhouette19• 9 years ago

This is not new and if your backup system does not comply with regulations, it's probably more of a design problem.

Perhaps, but it's a design problem that approximately 100% of otherwise reasonable backup systems will have, and working around it comprehensively will be extraordinarily expensive.

Do we really want to impose rules that incentivize businesses storing personal data on behalf of their customers not to back that data up properly, in order to avoid any potential liability under the GDPR? Because that's exactly what this law does, as it stands.

yuhong3• 9 years ago

After a certain number of years is the key difference.

Slartie3• 9 years ago

First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't like the content, but that is what the EU has ruled should happen.

No, it is about deleting personal data attached to your user account, not "news articles". This thing intends to make the "delete my account" button to actually, you know, "delete my account", instead of fake-deleting it by setting a "deleted" flag and telling me that everything is gone now while still keeping gigabytes of data associated with me in your database.

[...] meaning you need a way to ensure that "forgotten" users never get restored.

If this is considered to be a hard problem, then I assume storing some list of deleted users in a separate place and immediately purge those users from the backup after restore must be some kind of rocket science.

There is a good chance your little startup that isn't cash flow positive will have to spend $1 million of its VC money on becoming GDPR compliant.

I wouldn't call it "to become GDPR compliant", I would call it "to build a sound database structure". Because if you are unable to purge all data associated to one of your users' accounts from your system without destroying the integrity of the rest of your data, then you obviously have a half-baked system at your hands that lacks a core feature - to actually delete accounts. And you surely should spend some of your money to refactor this crap into a long-term viable solution while you are still small and agile enough to do that. Because it's only going to be way more expensive later on...

spydum• 9 years ago

You missed the point: if I take an image backup of a disk and store it, even in encrypted format, and it contains John Doe's account, and he comes along and asks for his account deleted, I would have to purge not just my database record, but the backups images from the past as well. That invalidates ALL of my backups. It's not often practical to backup INDIVIDUAL users..

isoprophlex• 9 years ago

If you mind answering me this, I'm having a hard time figuring it out myself: Will the GDPR mean I'll finally be able to completely delete myself from Facebook?

nthcolumn2• 9 years ago

No, it is about deleting personal data attached to your user account, not "news articles".

No it is exactly that! The test case was from a man specifically Mario Costeja González wishing for his past financial embarrassments to be erased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Spain_v_AEPD_and_Mario_...

cbr• 9 years ago

    If you follow GDPR strictly you would need to be
    able to purge the data from your backups.
    Now most backups are considered immutable, so
   you aren't going to do that

Encrypt with a user-specific key, and destroy that key to drop all backups concerning that user.

justinjlynn• 9 years ago

Don't assume the law makes a distinction between data which is destroyed and data which is irretrievable. I can easily see someone arguing that the data is not destroyed -- there's simply a very, very low chance that anyone will be able to retrieve it. You and I both know that argument makes no sense, but hey, it's the law -- it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to convince a few people with power that you're wrong.

Spivak4• 9 years ago

This only applies to home grown backup systems. If all you're doing are VM backups of your SQL database there's 0% chance you have the granularity to delete a single user.

"Then don't do that"

Sure, but now you actually have an imposition because the ability to do this kind of thing can't be done on any commercially available backup system.

makomk2• 9 years ago

If the key required to decrypt your backups isn't backed up, you don't have backups. If it is, you're back to the original problem.

solomatov4• 9 years ago

There is a good chance your little startup that isn't cash flow positive will have to spend $1 million of its VC money on becoming GDPR compliant.

This isn't actually that complicated if their software is designed from scratch with GDPR in mind. Current approach is collect all the data you can with the intention of selling this to data brokers. GDPRs discourages this. It shouldn't be that complicated and that expensive if you store the minimum amount of information you can to cut costs.

The big tech companies already have compliance officers, but GDPR is so massively invasive to businesses that even small companies now need compliance officers.

This can be done away in a way small business hire contractor lawyers and accountants with an hourly rate. If you are small, you shouldn't do anything which might involve high fees from them.

A_No_Name_Mouse2• 9 years ago

Take the right to be forgotten. First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't like the content, but that is what the EU has ruled should happen.

That is not correct. The right to privacy is not an absolute right. It has to be balanced against other rights, such as the right to free press. In a normal news article case, free press would prevail.

There is a good chance your little startup that isn't cash flow positive will have to spend $1 million of its VC money on becoming GDPR compliant.

I advise a lot of small customers to implement manual procedures to retrieve or delete data in case a request for it might be done. And to set up a basic privacy and security policy which they should have had already. This doesn't cost much.

Except that controller must agree to every sub-processor you use.

This can be a generic agreement where the processor notifies the processor.

Want to switch from AWS to GCP? You can only do it if all your customers agree.

Not true, you do however need to be able to tell customers what companies receive their data. Which can be quite a challenge with sub-sub-subcontractors.

Want to use try out a new metrics or logging service? If it will have any PII you can't do it without customer (controller) permission.

Not true if the processing agreement contains a clause that instructs processor to perform metrics or logging. Customer consent is often not needed unless it has big impact on their privacy. Consent is only one of the legal grounds.

You will basically need to hire full-time compliance officers to deal with this. The big tech companies already have compliance officers, but GDPR is so massively invasive to businesses that even small companies now need compliance officers.

If this were true I'd be a lot busier. It would be wise if companies assign the responsibility for privacy and security, but it doesn't always need to be a full time job with a level background.

dangerface• 9 years ago

"the right to be forgotten" This is already in EU data protection law where data needs to be forgotten after its relevancy and a cool down period, it considers and covers things like your example.

"purge the data from your backups" Again you should already be doing this if you do business with the EU or you are breaking the law.

"Do you have the ability to retrieve everything you know about a specific user" Again this is already in the EU data protection law you should already be able to do this or you have been breaking the law.

Im not a lawyer so take this all with a pinch of salt this is just stuff I need to know as an EU developer. Sure it might be slightly more work for US tech companies but I can't be arsed is not a valid reason to break the law. If you think it will cost to much then don't do it, there are plenty of EU companies that do.

cinquemb2• 9 years ago

Might be easier for small niche companies with no offices in the EU but willing EU customers to ask for payment via a cryptocurrency.

It just seems to me in the long run, more and more laws like this will pop up, and using cryptocurrencies will get easier/ more familiar.

rspeer• 9 years ago

Nobody is going to look for SaaS on the black market, unless the service they're looking for was illegal to start with.

cinquemb2• 9 years ago

unless the service they're looking for was illegal to start with.

Luckily, we will always know of everything that was/is legal now will be illegal in the future, and that people/companies throughout history will always submit to the costs of regulatory compliance of all governments in the world, no matter how burdensome they may be in specific instances.

yuhong3• 9 years ago

I have been thinking that the ad bubble is a problem for a while now. Ads are basically to encourage consumption, and the US economy has been debt based for decades now.

davidgerard• 9 years ago

We [technology dept at a non-computer business in the UK] got the lecture about this at work. Turns out geeks are fans of this approach!

I've been using "GDPR hazard" as a useful way to kill bad ideas at work. "Sure you can do that! We just need you to confirm that your business unit accepts responsibility for this user-identifying data and ... oh, we can delete it? I'll do that now then."

We have lots of user-identified data, going back years. I can't see it as a bad thing for us to behave properly with regard to it, and to be required to do so.

andrei_says_• 9 years ago

Just wondering, would an European residing in the US be able to request EU compliance for their data?

mdip3• 9 years ago

My first instinct was to be pretty happy about these laws, which surprised me quite a bit. I generally identify on the libertarian/pro-capitalist side of things and "as a general rule" subscribe to the belief that government regulations are often more problematic than problem solving[0]. So I had to take a moment to analyse why I felt this way.

Here's the problem as I see it: I know all of the things that are collected, how they're collected, what shady practices are used[1] and I'm completely aware that there is no anonymity left on the internet. The old "when the product is free, you're the product" isn't lost on me. In reading this, though, I was still finding myself a little outraged[2]. I look at it this way: if yesterday, we had an web with plain old "dumb advertising" techniques limited in sophistication in the manner of television advertising in the 90s, and today we ended up with this, there would be rioting (in the USA, anyway[3]). This didn't necessarily happen slowly but it happened gradually and quietly. I remember when Facebook announced that it was adding the ability to track you on other sites that you visited while you were logged out -- that was announced and it was met with criticism (briefly, though I quit the platform about a month later in a quiet, personal, revolt).

Here's the thing - if you ask an average non-technical individual if they understand that they're being tracked on the internet, they'll shrug and say "yes". If you dig a little deeper, you'll discover that they haven't the faintest idea how deeply they're being tracked and that they don't even have an analogy in their own lives to equate that tracking to. I couldn't come up with anything to describe the extent of tracking short of extremely lengthy explanations of what's being done and used[4].

And then there's me - I understand I'm being tracked and have basically chosen the head-in-the-sand approach. I use adblock, and a few extensions that supposedly "limit tracking" (doubtful) but I know they're worthless. Here's the thing, though, what choice do we have? And that's where I concluded how I was able to land in favor of some form of regulation on this behavior[5]. It is becoming increasingly impossible to avoid interacting with companies like Google and Facebook[6]. I look at it this way -- a company that becomes a monopoly in such an important industry can exert as much, if not more, control over the citizenry than their own government[7] but without the limitations imposed by democracy.

What should be done? I'm not sure. Self-regulation isn't working. I have zero faith in government crafting any kind of law related to technology that won't be some combination of horribly ineffective, worse than what we have today, utterly breaks something really important, or is used as a means to insert something horrible (watch them try to pop in a line-item around key-escrow). I'm kind of surprised to find myself thinking that approach that looks the best, out of the options, is probably forced-competition through breaking up the companies involved and I hate that idea in principal and in practice -- it's worked just-about as well in the past.

[0] I don't want this to devolve into a flame-war of whether regulating is "good or not", though I fear I may have just stoked that flame, I'm simply providing background for contextual purposes.

[1] I half- admire the creative uses of WebRTC with STUN on what are otherwise regarded as highly reputable major news sites. It's difficult for me to not see that practice as poking a hole in my firewall and I feel no less outrage when I see that happening than I do when a piece of malware does the same thing.

[2] Part of me had forgotten the idea that when GMail was "scanning e-mails for advertising purposes", they were scanning e-mails that were coming inbound from non-GMail users who couldn't have possibly consented to that. I'm sure there's a really good counter argument, but I'd have a hard time not feeling a little violated by that practice if I weren't a GMail user, already.

[3] Probably elsewhere, but my experience is that some European countries' citizens (particularly the UK, where I have the most experience outside of the US) are more tolerant to this sort of thing whereas when I was a child, you'd have seen people gathering in militias the moment the government tried to propose something like Real ID.

[4] I can only speak anecdotally since I had this conversation with family members who are non-technical and after about two hours, had them quite disgusted -- asking how is that legal ... and these are some of the most government-skeptical conservative people you'd ever meet.

[5] And I have zero faith in the US government being able to craft a law that works. Minimally the "they must still offer the service if the user opts out" will be removed, entirely, turning the "agree to be tracked" button into the moral equivalent of the "Cookie Warning" -- something you click because you have to. And philosophically, if we weren't talking about monopolies or near-monopolies here, I'd agree with that approach.

[6] Yes, DuckDuckGo is my default search engine, everywhere. And I've now trained myself to use the shortcut to get to google for the 60-70% of searches that DDG returns unworkable results. I think it's my search patterns, which tend to be very narrow in results, causing Bing/DDG to "broaden" and ignore terms (or when used with parameters, simply yield nothing). My parents (both retired) use DDG and rarely anything else since I switched all of their browsers around (they didn't even realize I had changed it -- they don't think of Google as a company, they think of search as something "the internet just has ..."). They are perfectly happy with it.

[7] Or can work in concert with it. Requirements to hand over Facebook credentials at the border are becoming common. I'm waiting for the day when I say "yeah, I don't use that" and end up back in a little room with an angry looking man asking me a bunch of (the same; slightly rephrased) questions and responding to them with the assumption that I'm lying (personal experience on that one; not fun). I mean, after all, I'm a programmer/live on the internet/et. al., surely I must use Facebook and I'm trying to hide something! /s

dingo_bat4• 9 years ago

Just want to say that any emails I receive are my property. And I can grant consent to Google allowing them to mine these emails. Once you send an email, you are ceding control to the recipient.

mdip3• 9 years ago

While it's nice to think that's actually the case, the legal situation is almost certainly more nuanced. The thing that comes to mind for me is the implicit copyright protection.

I'm not sure if that would apply to a message I sent to you, but it may, and if that's the case, it's "my property", not yours. I'd be interested to know if any case law exists on this. Considering how often the DMCA is abused, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tried a DMCA takedown claiming copyright ownership on an embarrassing e-mail sent to someone and then subsequently posted online.

mzzter• 9 years ago

What does the first footnote mean?

"Nor can they deny access to their services to users who refuse to opt-in to tracking.[1]"
"[1] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) [2016] OJ L119/1. See Recital 42’s reference to “without detriment”, Recital 43’s discussion of “freely given” consent, and Article 7(2) prohibition of conditionality. See also the UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s draft guidance on consent, 31 March 2017, p. 21, which clearly prohibits so-called “tracking walls”."

What, in this regulation, prevents the company from denying users (who opt out) access to a service they provide free of charge or a downgraded experience? And how would a court measure the level of service?

taysic10• 9 years ago

Im guessing they would force the company to make tracking not on by default but rather opt-in (lol)? But what's confusing is - if you clearly state how the data will be used upfront, do you need to offer an opt-out? What if your service simply doesn't work unless the data is used in a particular way?

grabeh5• 9 years ago

Under the GDPR one way to use data for purposes unrelated to the underlying service provision is to look to obtain consent. That is not opt-out consent but clear informed consent through opt-in.

If your service won't work functionally without certain data then consent is not right ground of processing to rely on. There is a specific ground relating to processing necessary to provide a service.

If your service isn't financially viable because you can't use data to obtain revenue to support the underlying service provision then consent may not be a viable ground because of the above reasons.

The debate continues however on how to support free service provision outside of the confines of consent.

grabeh5• 9 years ago

The idea is that a user should not suffer detriment as a result of their decision to withhold consent. If you withhold the service as a result of a failure to provide consent then the user is likely to suffer a detriment.

However the above analysis really ignores free services where you are essentially paying with your data.

It is an ongoing question as to how to deal with these services in relation to GDPR. To my mind privacy advocates ignore the fact that without giving companies the ability to use data, the services may not be available for free, a potential detriment in itself.

fnord77• 9 years ago

I need to move to europe.

whyagaindavid• 9 years ago

Will GDPR allow me to delete my Apple-ID? Thanks

virgilp• 9 years ago

yes

throwaway91234• 9 years ago

Throwaway since I don't want to involve my employer.

I actually work for a platform that is squarely in the GDPR crosshairs (digital marketing). There are a lot of things where our lawyers' perspective is different from what most people say here (I didn't talk directly to lawyers, but I presume product managers did).

- You don't have to comply in 2018, you have to show that you started seriously working on a solution, even if you're not fully prepared. - You don't have to have automated processes for everything (e.g. delete from backups), it's actually perfectly reasonable to say "we'll process your request" and do it manually (ref: startups spending inordinate amounts of effort for GDPR compliance). - Opt-in is not as "game changer" as suggested here, my understanding is that you can do implicit consent (notify the user about what you do, give them a link to take action; crucially, that link might even be the link to your privacy policy which contains the link to the opt-out interface... if I got this right - and I think that I did - this may not amount to much more than a slightly modified "this site uses cookies" thingy). - Delete requests may be handled by "de-identification" (don't delete the data, delete the association with you). - Related to that, while I don't have a definitive answer, I strongly suspect that GDPR only applies to information that can be positively associated with you (e.g. authenticated activity). I'm not obliged to show you anonymous browser activity/information that I've probabilistically associated with you, for the simple reason that I might be wrong and I might disclose sensitive information (think about girlfriend looking up "what does Amazon know about me" and finding up that "she is interested in an engagement ring" because you anonymously browsed from her computer, thus spoiling your surprise even though you were careful to delete your browser history/ browse anonymously. Yes, incognito mode doesn't necessarily help you - we do efforts to identify server-side the incognito sessions and de-link them from the probabilistic marketing profiles, because we don't want to negatively-surprise the customers; but I suspect not all players are that careful).

Overall... despite what many people think, I think big players are actually fairly careful/sensitive about your privacy (well, if we exclude Facebook here :D ). It's the startups that would concern me more... they have very little incentive to guard your data well, because there are so many OTHER reasons why they might fail, that "privacy disaster" is very low on their list of concerns.

1024core• 9 years ago

So, are ad clicks "personal data" ? That would basically destroy all adtech startups.

brango• 9 years ago

Yes, if you capture IPs/anonymous user IDs, perhaps user agents etc.

gonmf• 9 years ago

I'd imagine the host website needs to ask for the permission to share specific data with a third party named XYZ Startup, that will use that data for language/country segmentation or whatever is they do, and if the user denies that right then random ads are shown instead.

AriaMinaei2• 9 years ago

While I see some of the concerns about the _technicality_ of the law as completely legitimate, it still bothers me that so many people reject the whole spirit of this law, and cannot put the negative of "tax on startups" against the much greater good of personal privacy.

I've just started a business myself, and this regulation affects my company too. It makes development costlier; it'll take from the precious little time we have to spend on compliance paperwork rather than work on our core business. In the short run, it does hurt our chances of success.

Yet, none of the trouble is even comparable to what's to be gained here. And it bothers me (though doesn't surprise me) that some people don't see that.

It also bothers me that such vocal opposition barely comes up when the discussion is just about bigger companies such as Google and Facebook. How can we expect "un-evilness" from bigger companies when we're barely willing to do anything in that regard ourselves?

fixermark4• 9 years ago

Possibly because personal privacy as a "much greater good" is open to debate. People place wildly differing values on that property.

Google's current ecosystem of data-sharing means that Assistant can make educated context guesses on what I mean when I talk to it based on my browser history and map navigation history. If the new privacy constraints damage that passive interconnection, that's not a net good for me.

the_mitsuhiko21• 9 years ago

Then opt into collection. This does not disallow that.

AriaMinaei2• 9 years ago

... privacy as a "much greater good" is open to debate

I agree, but that's a different topic, really. The comments here aren't about the (un)/importance of privacy. The main debate seems to be either about the technicality of the law and its possible unintended consequences, which are legitimate concerns, or they're about how "this is gonna make my job much harder," which is not really a legitimate concern in this context, and those comments were the ones I was talking about.

Google's current ecosystem of data-sharing means that Assistant can make educated context guesses on what I mean when I talk to it based on my browser history and map navigation history. If the new privacy constraints damage that passive interconnection, that's not a net good for me.

I think we're overestimating a technical difficulty here, and downplaying a moral principle.

Providing a personalised service without storing large amounts of personal information in a central location is not impossible. It's just technically harder to do.

And even if it was impossible, then still, we need to sort out the moral consequences first. Not by banning technological progress of course, but perhaps by bringing more oversight to corporations. Or by making sure that people of lower socioeconomic background aren't hit harder than the wealthy.

closeparen9• 9 years ago

I wonder how this will interact with accounting standards. Ledgers have historically been immutable. If I buy something from you and then demand deletion of my data, do you need to revise all previous financial statements to make it appear as if the transaction never occurred?

The spirit of the law is nonsensical. It makes all commercial activity illegal, to the extent that all businesses keep records of their sales, inventory, etc. which reflect the activities of their customers, employees, and suppliers.

the_mitsuhiko21• 9 years ago

Accounting info must not be modified. This does not change that. Same way you can't demand deletion from credit reporting data.

sageikosa• 9 years ago

Cool. 88 more pages of functional specs on every project.

richrichardsson• 9 years ago

Would one way "around" this be, "Welcome to ABC Service, it costs X€/month to use, or if you allow us to use your data to sell to our advertisers we will waive this fee."?

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