We value your privacy now, but maybe not later

https://raimue.blog/2019/01/26/we-value-your-privacy-now-but-maybe-not-later/

by raimue • 7 years ago

239 103 7 years ago

vecnotron• 7 years ago

this is illegal under GDPR for two reasons: opt-in gained with privacy policy v1 are not valid if gets updated. and you need to opt in by choice not because is the only option

yeahitslikethat2• 7 years ago

If you want to use a gopro on your phone you MuST agree to give then your location data. It's the only option.

wilkskyes• 7 years ago

Wouldn't leaving the site be a valid way to opt out?

Wowfunhappy2• 7 years ago

Is it just my limited understanding, or are a majority of companies blatantly violating GDPR?

I was reading through Vox's privacy policy the other day, on a whim. (I'm in the US, but I was connected to a UK VPN at the time--so if the policy does explicitly change depending on country, they should have thought I was in the EU.) The cookie policy can be summarized as: "We use cookies to track you. If you don't want us to use cookies to track you, you can opt out by setting your browser to block all cookies." Never mind that this would cause a wide range of functionality to not work.

And then there's Amazon. I desperately want Amazon to stop showing me personalized recommendations--I don't actually mind the tracking, but I feel as though recommendations push me into a filter bubble. As far as I can tell, there is zero way to do this whatsoever.

tyfon4• 7 years ago

When I see "We value your privacy" I know instantly something shady is going on. The only thing I'll accept is a "Accept" and "Reject all" button next to each other without further clicks.

My list of web sites that I actually visit gets smaller and smaller. I have a shortlist and for most of them I pay to remove ads if they have the option and I have all kinds of ad-blocking installed both on the network level and browser level.

friendly_chap• 7 years ago

You are absolutely right, but the sad reality is that we are a small minority. Perhaps we can influence the world by education though.

FiveSquared3• 7 years ago

Well education is a lost cause due to the masses being overworked/ overstressed / overwhelmed/undereducated /etc. I have seen people who write down their password in paper and carry them around. If people can’t remover secure passwords, how are they gonna protect their privacy?

dman• 7 years ago

Time to go back to books and newspapers for information? :)

tyfon4• 7 years ago

No there are still websites that you can pay for and I pay whenever I can.

Right now I pay for a local news paper, youtube premium (then ad-block the crap out of it), resetera and di.fm (music). HN doesn't have ads afaik and if it does or try to track me it's blocked. I'd pay for a tracking-free version if that was necessary though.

But I do read a lot of books, approximately two a week :) I also play games quite a bit.

And I know I can't escape tracking entirely (ip tracking ++) but can be damn sure I will try my hardest!

albertgoeswoof2• 7 years ago

The other thing that is driving me crazy is the dark patterns employed to get you to click accept. Sometimes the reject button has deliberately had the onclick/hover changes removed so it doesn’t feel like a working button, other times it’s buried 3 levels deep etc.

What are we supposed to do about these? They have been added to comply with GDPR but clearly don’t.

duxup2• 7 years ago

What is funny is that time and again we've found that ... companies will still do what they want it even if "accidentally".

albertgoeswoof2• 7 years ago

From the HN privacy policy:

Changes to Y Combinator’s Privacy Policy:

The Site and our operations may change from time to time. As a result, at times it may be necessary for Y Combinator to make changes to this Privacy Policy. Y Combinator reserves the right to update or modify this Privacy Policy at any time and from time to time without prior notice. Please review this policy periodically, and especially before you provide any Personal Data. This Privacy Policy was last updated on the date indicated above. Your continued use of the Site after any changes or revisions to this Privacy Policy shall indicate your agreement with the terms of such revised Privacy Policy.

Despegar• 7 years ago

Speaking of HN, how do you delete your account from it?

frutiger2• 7 years ago

What do you want to achieve by deleting your account? I can see basically two options:

1. prevent you (or anyone else) using your handle to post submissions or comments

2. delete all posted submissions and comments in addition to option 1 above; this is a little futile as HN has been indexed and replicated elsewhere

EDIT: the following is incorrect, as pointed out by jacobsheehy.

I will note that both are possible without any assistance from HN, though perhaps option 2 could be made easier.

FiveSquared3• 7 years ago

Email hn@ycombinator.com . Dang is really helpful ;)

gumby3• 7 years ago

What would count as your data? Given that your comments are part of threads, perhaps the comments should remain but the user (of all deleted comments by anyone) should be null?

I believe you own the copyright to each comment though, but does GDPR cover PII only or all other data as well?

Threads would be confusing if non-leaf nodes were to be removed.

aritmo• 7 years ago

They have the cookie and they know on which version of the privacy policy we accepted.

Can't they be arsed to show the updated privacy policy when it is put in place, on our next visit?

avian• 7 years ago

I'm happy they don't do that. I have my browser set to delete cookies. For many websites that means that I have to click through multiple such "one-time on next visit" banners/popups/whatever each time I visit them.

deogeo3• 7 years ago

You go to the local baker and buy a loaf of bread.

After you leave, he writes down, on a piece of paper, your name (he knows you, after all), when you arrived, how long you took to choose what to buy, what you bought, and how you paid - bills, credit card, etc. He also writes down if you looked happy, nervous, what you were wearing, if you were with someone, and anything else he can see.

He then seals this paper in an envelope, and at night, when no-one is around to see, sells a whole bag of such envelopes to the mining/merchant/transportation conglomerate from the neighboring town, for little more than pocket-change.

Would you consider such a person a good neighbor?

mLuby• 7 years ago

No, but someone giving bread away for free and doing that wouldn't be so clearly bad. I think the difference is the obvious exchange of value (money for bread) in the first case suggests that's the entirety of the transaction. So the baker additionally "taking" the customer's data feels like stealing. But in the second case, it feels more acceptable that the exchange is (data for bread) since we all know there's no free lunch. There's a reason when you give someone something for free they ask "what's the catch?".

FiveSquared3• 7 years ago

And the lack of clarity. The People You May Know things on FB is due to contacts being shared, which is pressed into the user. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/07/30/why...

tux19682• 7 years ago

But FB is not giving anything away for free. They are selling your attention on to advertisers. While it's not a cash transaction between you and FB, it is a barter agreement with you. It's not correct to cast FB in the role of selfless baker giving away free bread.

CivBase• 7 years ago

No, but someone giving bread away for free and doing that wouldn't be so clearly bad.

I disagree. If he is not transparent about what he does with his customers privacy, he is still a "bad neighbor" as the OP put it.

Even if he makes everyone sign a contract which explains his actions before giving them the bread (GDPR-style), the transaction would still be sketchy to me. IMO, to be as fair as possible to the customer, the contract would have to be very clear and concise. Otherwise, the wording of the contract could easily take advantage of the customer's lack of time, short attention span, or poor reading comprehension.

ludocode• 7 years ago

No, but someone giving bread away for free and doing that wouldn't be so clearly bad.

I would say that's even worse. By giving bread away for free, he's making it impossible for other bakeries to compete unless they do the same thing.

This is why there are no serious competitors to services like Facebook or GMail. It's impossible to compete with free unless you monetize the data.

I say this as someone who pays for ProtonMail. Do you think it's possible to convince friends and family to start paying for email as well when they already get it for free?

est31• 7 years ago

Mobile phone carriers take your money and still sell your data. Same for some credit card companies.

josho2• 7 years ago

In my case I’m not buying bread nor being given the bread. I just browsed the neighboring store and this baker still has those details on me.

Ie. I use no google products. Yet by just surfing the web and being tracked through google’s products or by emailing people with gmail, google has almost as much information on me as if I were their user.

Wowfunhappy2• 7 years ago

And yet when I buy products on Amazon, I still get tracked. (And to boot, they actually seem to be the hardest ones to opt out of tracking, or at least turn off the user-visible personalized recommendations.)

chrischen2• 7 years ago

I don’t think the distinction is in whether or not the bread is free, it’s in whether or not that the data collection is disclosed as a non-monetary cost to the bread.

Negitivefrags• 7 years ago

"the customer's data"

I have a question. How is it the customers data? The data is about a transaction that happened in the bakers store. It's all information that was plain for the baker to see. The baker did the work to collect it.

In fact, all the information is about the interaction directly with the baker. How is this not the bakers data?

Can someone walk into my store and somehow give me something that belongs to them against my will? And then impose requirements on me about what I can do with it? Or it only belongs to them at the point I write it down?

Now I start to agree that there are concerns at the point in a computing scenario when people are gathering data that isn't a part of the transaction actually taking place without the person knowing. But shouldn't that be on the browsers to deal with?

grawprog• 7 years ago

I'd say most people wouldn't...but then they'll turn around, head into a Starbucks and pay with the mobile app on their phone...

The baristas get confused when I tell them, every time they bug me about signing up, that 10¢ off a coffee isn't enough if Starbucks wants me to help them with market research.

14• 7 years ago

I have the same sentiment when I end up running into a 7-11 and they ask me "do you have our app?". No I do not have your app and no a slurpee every month will not convince me to install it either. I can not believe the amount of people who just install in without question.

pmoriarty• 7 years ago

What you're missing is the scale.

Facebook and Google do this sort of data collection on an unprecedented scale that humans really have a hard time wrapping their heads around.

The sheer power that comes from data collection done on such a scale is tremendous.

Comparing it to a little bit of data collection by a single individual is grossly misleading.

deogeo3• 7 years ago

Yet even when it's a single individual it feels, at best, incredibly shady.

dwaltrip• 7 years ago

Exactly this. Comparing similar activities but at vastly different scales will often lead to misleading conclusions.

In engineering, I've heard this idea expressed in the rule of thumb that the best solutions change with each increase in order of magnitude.

neuralRiot• 7 years ago

Exactly, the analogy would be better the baker following you every time you step out and following everywhere and writting down every window you look, what you buy, how much you pay, taking your adress book and copying the phones of every one of your contacts on it an then call them saying "xx just got free bread! Pass by our store and get yours today!"

matz1• 7 years ago

If he sell the bread for free and good enough then yeah I would consider get my bread from him.

Its not clear what the actual harm of damage that I suffer from these transaction or even if there is any.

AlexandrB2• 7 years ago

I was born in Soviet Ukraine. Under such a dictatorship, this is not just a bad neighbour but someone who is actively dangerous to your continued existence. Because even innocent transgressions against the state can carry fatal consequences "keeping quiet" is taught early and often and loyalty is highly valued from friends and family.

I think this is why I find myself more sensitive to these issues than some of my colleagues. Even if corporate surveillance is harmless under the current political climate, history doesn't stand still.

deanCommie• 7 years ago

GDPR execution has been a dumpster fire of usability dark patterns and user hostile design.

The web has not had this many pop-ups since the 1990s.

sakisv• 7 years ago

The problem is not with the pop-ups, but with how many dark patterns are involved in getting your consent.

They could have made a simple pop-up, in simple language with two clear options and an optional dropdown showing all the "providers" but then again that would have been too user friendly.

Maybe GDPR should be revised to address these things, maybe even provide a template with 5 different color schemes that everyone should be forced to use.

fabrika• 7 years ago

The problem for the majority of the visitors are pop-ups. Everyone just clicks the green button. No time to read two clear options or bother with dropdowns. That's how people behave.

These pop-ups are required by GDPR. If your site doesn't have a pop-up you risk losing 20M Euro.

groestl2• 7 years ago

This has very little to do with the GDPR. The GDPR allows the use of cookies under various provisions, and does not necessarily require user consent. These popups are about the ePrivacy directive (aka "cookie law"): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Electronic_Commu...

duxup2• 7 years ago

It really seems like the only good privacy policy is

"We just don't collect X data, ever."

I don't know if I would trust it, but it would be the only one that I would have even a tidbit of faith in / think that it represents a good faith offer.

If they do collect it, I just assume it is being stored in the name of selling it. At this point it seems to be a foregone conclusion.

cygned• 7 years ago

I noticed that some of these often-used cookie accept overlays take an awful long time to apply my choice (up to a minute) when I opt out of all non-required cookies.

I guess that is on purpose to annoy me to click “Accept all” anyway. I don’t expect that they value my choice either.

phoe-krk• 7 years ago

Of course we value your privacy.

In US dollars.

martimarkov• 7 years ago

I really want to see companies getting fined for breaking the GDPR. Even better would be if they got a few companies to a bankruptcy lvl. Mainly so we get rid of the dark patterns. Just have 3 options: Accept All, Reject All, Custom

I hate it when the only option is accept or when I get redirected to a 3rd party website which tells me I need to enable 3rd party cookies for them to not track me... well fuck you guys, I don’t want to enable them.

My solution so far is: Ghostery + DuckDuckGo + uBlock Origins + PiHole. Any other suggestions are welcomed.

andr• 7 years ago

I can understand that quite a few companies' commercial product is your personal information (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and even news media nowadays).

What is scaring me is companies that have a different business model using the same techniques to sell your information. Today I noticed that Dropbox.com login does not work with the Ghostery ad blocker enabled. Ghostery blocked a total of 48 items on Dropbox.com, including 22 trackers. For a company that I pay $100/yr and trust with all my personal files, that number should be 0, everything else is a breach of my trust.

thoughtstheseus• 7 years ago

Yeah, unfortunately, spying on people is the norm. I have little confidence these business models will work in the long-run. Hopefully.

alexandercrohde• 7 years ago

Serious question -- how can this be legal?

Think about it. For all I know tomorrow the policy could say "You agree to pay the site all your savings?" This sort of prior blank-check consent seems to lead to absurd scenarios when thought about.

teknopaul• 7 years ago

How can this be legal? Maybe it isn't; you have to file GDPR complaints.

mlthoughts2018• 7 years ago

I’m willing to bet it’s not enforceable, and in court it would not hold up for a company to claim their new privacy policy was intrinsically consented to by virtue of site usage alone.

The purpose is probably just to add legal obfuscation and extra cost burdens in the process of suing a company over privacy issues. It costs them little to add legalese like this to their policy, and may possibly create some gargantuan burden of effort in the future to argue that it’s not enforceable, just further reducing the number of would-be lawsuits to challenge them.

twblalock• 7 years ago

Privacy policies can change at any time, but that's not the only problem. Companies that hold your private data can be hacked. They can be acquired by new owners who don't care about privacy.

Even if you trust a company with your private data, and even if you are fully informed about the data that they collect and what they use it for, you will have no control over what happens to that data eventually.

techslave• 7 years ago

Would you agree to a contract that can be changed by the other party at any time in any way?

A privacy policy is not a contract.

Of course it has to be (and should be) updatable. The privacy landscape changes over time.

The way these things are, is actually perfect. It means, you can ignore it entirely because the company has complete discretion on whether to abide or not. The only thing you have to go by, is reputational considerations (which doesn't recover your lost privacy), and absolute legal requirements that exist outside of any policy statement, eg GDPR, COPPA, HIPAA.

groestl2• 7 years ago

A privacy policy is not a contract

Exactly. Why Atlas Obscura even uses language about "agreement" ("[...], you are agreeing to such modifications.") is beyond me. It might even result in more legal exposure and restrict their freedom to move within the limits of the GDPR to rely on user consent (provided they even want to comply with the GDPR as a Delaware Corp).

Animats• 7 years ago

A contract which allows one party to change the terms may not be a valid contract at all. There's a legal truism, "an agreement to agree is not an agreement."[1] This comes up regularly in "letter of intent" cases. The rules vary by state. New York is very negative on "agreements to agree".[2] Putting a phrase like that in a contract may weaken the position of the party putting it there.

Any comments from lawyers?

[1] https://www.blaney.com/articles/agreements-to-agree-do-they-... [2] https://scarincihollenbeck.com/law-firm-insights/agreement-t...

benatkin• 7 years ago

I guessed that the title was about startups that value privacy but still collect too much data. When they get acquired by a typical giant corporation, they don't value privacy but still have lots of data. The modification clause is what enables them to misuse peoples' data.

dennisgorelik3• 7 years ago

I just opened atlasobscura.com

There is no privacy popup for me. I am in the US, so EU laws are not applicable here.

I blame EU GDPR laws for the popup that Rainer Müller suffered from.

rebuilder• 7 years ago

IOW you don't even get notice they're tracking you. Is that an improvement?

raimue• 7 years ago

Thanks, that is indeed an interesting detail. However, you have to assume they use your data the same way, they just do not ask for your consent.

Felz• 7 years ago

As someone who recently put together a privacy policy myself, I can assure you that an updating clause is standard practice for both privacy policies and terms of service. The documents are really mostly for minimizing liability.

You can object to that, sure, but no sane company is going to open themselves up to lawsuits just because a few users are upset about it.

kmlx• 7 years ago

the last time i’ve seen such a drive for privacy was during the USSR, where the state wiuld actually kill or at least torture you. so you had to hide everything from them. this led to a broken society, where everyone lied to eachother over the most basic things (e.g. going out, eating a loaf of bread etc). that’s one of the reasons i escaped to the western world, where transparency was the norm, where no one cared what you had for breakfast, where there was no real threat to your life due to over exposure.

fast forward to today, and it feels like the west is developing into the USSR, but without the threats to life, just the “hide everything about you” part. it also feels like a partly nativist europe vs the rest of the world.

now it seems i have to escape yet again to parts of asia where they don’t worry about stuff like this.

edit: at the last minute i’m reminded that this is just the HN bubble, and outside Europe people still act normal and don’t care about this stuff.

We value your privacy now, but maybe not later

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