How to effectively evade the GDPR and the reach of the DPA

https://blog.zoller.lu/2020/05/how-to-effectively-evade-gdpr-and-reach.html

by thierryzoller • 6 years ago

230 192 6 years ago

blog.zoller.lu

burfog• 6 years ago

"Rocketreach has not met the requirement of the GDPR to name an EU representative (Art27) to account for the processing of European Personal Data. In their answer, the CNPD makes it sound like it is optional, it isn't. Instead of pursuing Rocketreach locally on that basis alone"

LOL, yes.

I'm sure they also do not meet the legal requirements of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and many others.

Likewise, various EU corporations do not meet the legal requirements of non-EU places like those. Would he prefer that they did?

Even more interesting, since he expects the US to follow EU law, how does he feel about the EU following US law? The US has that Patriot Act, and lots of EU companies are not compliant. Maybe he should report a few EU companies to the FBI.

luplex• 6 years ago

US companies should follow EU law when they are doing business in Europe, or processing EU citizens' data.

Likewise, EU companies should follow US law when they are doing business in the US.

Businesses should not operate in jurisdictions where they can't meet the legal requirements. At the very least, RocketReach should geoblock itself in Europe.

dtech2• 6 years ago

I'm sure they also do not meet the legal requirements of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and many others.

China is the most straightforward example, companies cannot operate unless they basically do it through an - implicitly Chinese state controlled - partner company. China also has a literal Great Firewall monitoring, modifying or stopping all cross-border traffic. So yes, you have to play by their rules if you want access to the market.

US, EU and other western countries also require you to follow their - much more lenient - laws and rules for access to their market, but for now it's rarely enforced through blocking etc. Saudia Arabia, Russia, India, Turkey and other "second world" countries block a lot of services that don't follow their laws or government commands. Same thing: follow da rulez or our market is closed to you.

North Korea has their own exclusive "internet" and blocks all access to the regular internet except for a few highly monitored and controlled locations like universities and government institutes, which are not connected to the NK internet. Not comparable at all.

Even more interesting, since he expects the US to follow EU law, how does he feel about the EU following US law? The US has that Patriot Act, and lots of EU companies are not compliant.

This is effectively already the case for a large part. All non-china global IaaS companies are US, so everyone has to play by US rules and law. I don't believe for a second that the NSA cannot get the data from the European Google/Amazon/Microsoft data centers.

lvturner• 6 years ago

I think your information may be a bit out of date, in China you can own and operate as a WFOE

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_foreign-owned_enterpr...

oarsinsync2• 6 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about the screenshot at the end, showing that various policy makers also have their personal information being sold.

I guess the information is out there, and doing so also makes it definitively personal for the policy makers / enforcers involved.

That said, the policy makers / enforcers may be genuinely hamstrung. The US imposes its laws globally because of it's status as a global reserve currency (trading in USD requires the transaction to route via the US, thus making the entity subject to US law).

The EU doesn't have such status or power over US companies. The most it can do is try to prevent them from operating in the region.

As a person who almost certainly has his personal information being sold on this platform, I'm not pleased, and would love to see something done to prevent this kind of activity. Unfortunately, that depends on the US government to take action, and the last 12 years haven't been a flying endorsement of the effectiveness of the current government system. (This is not meant as an statement regarding the effectiveness of either President, but rather a regarding the low output from the system as a whole)

ivan_gammel2• 6 years ago

EU can and should sanction such businesses, individuals behind it and their suppliers. Basically, just do the same as USA does to Nord Stream 2. This will be painful enough.

sam_lowry_• 6 years ago

And their clients, if necessary.

josefx• 6 years ago

The EU doesn't have such status or power over US companies.

US companies operating in the EU are subject to EU law. Worst case the company itself doesn't operate in the EU, however that still leaves its customers (Intel, AirBnB, etc. ) potential targets to apply pressure on.

garmaine6• 6 years ago

Does RocketReach have servers in the EU? Employees? Subsidiaries?

I generally don’t know in this case. But in general my European friends seem to think that merely having someone from the EU access a website makes that website’s owner have a presence in the EU, even if the server that handled it isn’t. That seems like overreach to me. If that were the case, I’d block EU access for any of my domains, and I don’t think we want a future where that becomes the norm. The ideals of the Internet are free exchange of ideas and information, no country-specific walled gardens.

burntoutfire2• 6 years ago

trading in USD requires the transaction to route via the US

Is this correct? How's that enforced? Say, I have a company in Poland which sells some goods for a million dollars to another company in Poland. We both have USD accounts in Polish banks and the transfer is between these accounts. How does the money route via the US?

oarsinsync2• 6 years ago

The bank will either have a presence in the US itself, or it'll have a partner that does that it'll route the transaction through.

If you've done a USD transfer, it'll most likely be a SWIFT transfer, and you can ask your bank for the SWIFT routing log. You'll most likely see an NYC bank (or NYC branch of your bank) in the middle.

PeterisP3• 6 years ago

It's not enforced but it's a de facto practical requirement.

If Polbank (forgive me for the bastardized names) wants to give 1M USD to Bankpolska, they either need to ship cash (which can be done but is expensive or tricky) or have a specific bilateral agreement betwene them (which can be done and is done sometimes, but linking every bank with every other bank bilaterally does not scale), or need some interbank settlement system that will do that, but there's no such system in which they can participate. E.g. there's Fedwire but neither Polbank or Bankpolska can be direct members as far as I understand (they generally are not members; I'm not certain if it's caused by some strict limitation or just practicalities and costs.)

So the standard means is to use 'correspondent banks' e.g. USA banks that do that for them. Polbank might have an USD account with Chase or Citi, and Polbank can ask Chase (via a SWIFT message usually) "hey transfer $1m from our account to Bankpolska, it's cover for a customer deal #1234" - but this means that the transaction "goes through" USA.

Alternatively, multinational banks may have branches in both USA and Poland and so they can be direct participants and settle this directly, however, then it would involve a Fedwire transfer (in USA, subject to USA laws and limitations) between Polbank USA branch and Bankpolska USA branch.

That's standard practice for pretty much every currency. EUR settlement between two American banks usually (not always, there are various options) goes through EU, RUB settlement usually goes through Russia, etc.

If there's a sufficient need, Polish banks could establish an interbank settlement system through which they could transfer USD directly (e.g. similar to the one they have for transfering Polish zloty), but it's a hassle and has costs, so currently they have not done so because for them it's generally not a problem to route all USD payments through USA.

cosmodisk• 6 years ago

It gets quite interesting when foreign currency is involved: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostro_and_vostro_accounts

Vinnl• 6 years ago

The EU doesn't have such status or power over US companies. The most it can do is try to prevent them from operating in the region.

Wouldn't that already be quite a step? I don't know who they're selling the data to, but it should at least be possible to prevent them from selling that data to organisations with a European presence, right?

secondcoming2• 6 years ago

Now watch the entire currently-EU based adtech industry relocate out of the EU...

rorykoehler2• 6 years ago

Good riddance

secondcoming2• 6 years ago

They'll still be operating, and serving you ads, just beyond the reach of EU laws.

ivan_gammel2• 6 years ago

It’s like drug cartels relocating from Mexico: noone will feel sorry.

rvnx4• 6 years ago

I don't see Google or Facebook relocating to Mexico soon. They don't have to, when they finance politicians

koheripbal5• 6 years ago

They would be relocating their corporation only - they'd still be operating in the EU on EU customers.

the_gipsy• 6 years ago

Ultimately, adtech has to broker between publishers and advertisers. If those have any business in EU, they will be liable for the data, even if the broker is outside of jurisdiction.

Aerroon5• 6 years ago

But the publisher and advertiser might not know where the data came from. The broker could easily just say "oh yeah, we have permission from these people to share this data".

I'm sure some of them will get caught, but how long will that take?

Aerroon5• 6 years ago

I thought this was obvious. I've been saying since day 1 that GDPR won't help much with privacy. It might even do the opposite by making people feel that their data is safe. But a company beyond the jurisdiction of the EU can simply ignore GDPR and vacuum up all the data they want.

What will ultimately help with privacy is not leaking out this data in the first place. Push browsers and other such services/devices to stop leaking enormous amounts of information on the user.

That's not to say that GDPR isn't useful. It certainly is, because it stops the big legal businesses from doing it, but it also has the downside of harming European online businesses.

malka• 6 years ago

UE should do as China do. A big firewall that block all US business that do not comply with GDPR.

cblconfederate• 6 years ago

Looks like rocketreach is aggregating information that is public on fb,linkedin etc. He forgot to mention that the google search result he got is already selling those, but maybe we ve become blind to that? Rocketreach is packaging and selling it directly, google does it indirectly. Same thing though, are those illegal?

GrumpyNl• 6 years ago

This information can also obtained from the chamber of commerce in the netherlands

LaundroMat• 6 years ago

Heh, I read that as "rocketroach" first.

ThePhysicist2• 6 years ago

Currently there's not much the data protection authorities in the EU can do about foreign companies abusing the data of users.

I assume that in the coming years (or decade?) there will be more efforts to ensure the enforcement of EU law for foreign companies that offer services to EU citizens as part of trade deals.

Right now there's e.g. a flourishing industry of data brokers in Israel that illegally collects data from EU (and US) citizens and sells it, a practice which is hard to stop as well since most of these companies don't have offices in the EU.

I think another possible strategy would be to go after the clients of these companies. If they can't legally sell their data to companies in the EU or US their business model would falter. The GDPR actually mandates that you as a data controller validate that companies which process data for you adhere to GDPR principles. Right now it seems this isn't being enforced much yet but I think it will be soon, which hopefully will have an effect on data brokers outside the EU as well.

imhoguy2• 6 years ago

It is enforced and viral in EU. Think of it like radioactive materials, any operation needs to be fully tracked.

While accessing any user personal details you need to have user consent to process their personal data. You can't simply buy the dataset and assume it has consent. When you buy data from data provider you need to make sure user gave consent to handle data by third-parties to that provider in accordance to GDPR. Users can revoke the consent, every party needs to be ready to handle that scenario. Any data export outside EU GDPR also needs consent. Moreover the dataset needs to be registered with local regulator.

Silhouette12• 6 years ago

While accessing any user personal details you need to have user consent to process their personal data.

Consent is only one of the lawful bases for processing data under the GDPR. In practice, it's the one almost everyone tries not to rely on unless they can't avoid it, because it comes with extra obligations that other bases might not.

arpinum3• 6 years ago

Does GDPR apply here? They might not be selling to the EU, and they aren’t monitoring EU persons but just selling historic information. I don’t read GDPR as applying globally to any and all trade in EU personal data. https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/

jansenmac• 6 years ago

Yes it does apply. https://www.hipaajournal.com/american-companies-gdpr/

arpinum3• 6 years ago

Your link is in reference to multi national companies. I don’t see how GDPR applies to companies that don’t do business with EU persons and without an EU presence.

ThrustVectoring• 6 years ago

GDPR applies, it has worldwide scope for data on EU citizens. On the other hand, European courts lack jurisdiction to enforce their laws on companies without EU offices and assets.

FWIW I'm really glad that EU courts lack this jurisdiction - any gain from privacy would more than be wiped out from losses to free speech, especially with the extensive history of libel tourism.

garmaine6• 6 years ago

It’s hard to make an argument for the EU courts having that jurisdiction without also granting the same to Saudi Arabia and China.

tzs2• 6 years ago

GDPR applies, it has worldwide scope for data on EU citizens

Not quite. It applies to people who are "in the Union".

There is a very large overlap between "EU citizens" and people "in the Union", so most of the time there is no need to make the distinction but it is there.

rvnx4• 6 years ago

Well in reality it applies if the US wants to enforce such judgments. If myself, as the king of Monaco, I declare a law that says that US companies should pay a tax to pay for air that transited through Monaco (and hence was cleaned by Monaco's trees), it's perfectly valid.

fmajid3• 6 years ago

It applies. Practical enforceability is another thing completely.

ohazi2• 6 years ago

When are we going to admit that GDPR is a failure?

Asserting a bunch of rights around personal privacy is great, but I've yet to see any compelling evidence that the relevant courts and bureocracies are capable of enforcing the law effectively. EVERYBODY is cheating.

Every time this is brought up on HN, the response is to wait for when the big fines start coming.

It's been two years. They're not coming.

arpinum3• 6 years ago

Can individuals sue and go to court? Or do complaints have to pass through privacy regulators.

I’m curious how a class action hasn’t been formed around Verizon and Oath’s behaviour?

talideon• 6 years ago

There's currently no equivalent of a class action suit under EU law, IIRC. Some jurisdictions within the EU have something equivalent, but there's nothing Union-wide. I vaguely recall some movement by the Commission to establish something like that though a few years back, but I don't recall where it went.

jacquesm2• 6 years ago

Some pretty big fines have been issued already. See:

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Over time I expect them to go up further as companies can no longer claim they did not have enough time or were not aware of the law (that never was a defense anyway but DPAs tend to be lenient. So far).

Since the GDPR has come into effect I see in my practice that companies are a lot more aware of their responsibilities towards their users, have better processes and security in place. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot but the improvement is immense and as time goes by and more companies end up setting an example of how things should be done and those that don't end up getting find I expect this trend to continue.

What I like most about the GDPR is that it steers towards compliance, not towards making life of businesses unnecessary harder.

Contrary to you I think the GDPR is a resounding success, the only thing that would make it much better still is if other areas of the world would take up similar legislation so the playing field would level.

ohazi2• 6 years ago

I mean, I genuinely hope I'm wrong here, so I'm happy if other people are disagreeing with my interpretation.

jaclaz2• 6 years ago

I dont know.

From what I can understand of German/Google translate, the third from top:

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Link to .pdf:

https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/Dokumente/Dsk/DSBT_20180927_DSB_D5...

Is the Austrian Authorities making a 300 Euro fine to a "common citizen" making "illegal" use of a dashcam (it seems - but I am not sure about it - that the issue is that the car is not - how? - visibly marked as videorecording?).

Anyone more familiar with German (and legal German) can clear the matter/explain?

Gwypaas2• 6 years ago

The larger fines are starting to trickle through[0], remember EU bureaucracy is usually less about flashy cases than US and more of giving people the tools to do the right thing.

[0] https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Jdam• 6 years ago

I just read a bit on that site:

The private person used a dashcam to make recordings of public road traffic and then published them on YouTube as a compilation.

What a PATHETIC thing this GDPR is. Fully agree that we should admit that GDPR is a massive failure (who would have thought!)

Greetings from a European.

luckylion• 6 years ago

It's 350 cases in two years in an economic zone of 450m people though.

ThePhysicist2• 6 years ago

A lot of the work that is done to become and stay compliant with the GDPR is invisible from the outside, but I can assure you that most large companies and a lot of the smaller ones are taking it serious.

The GDPR also has a "pull-in" effect on companies outside the EU that (often illegally) sell personal data because their clients in the EU (the data controllers) have to prove that these companies (their data processors) adhere to the GDPR if they want to do business with them. If a EU company buys personal data from a company outside the EU or sends personal data to that company they are liable if this data gets abused or if the personal data was not acquired in accordance with the GDPR. The whole "privacy shield" mess was about the question whether EU companies can still send personal to the US based on a self-certification process US companies go through (turns out they can't).

Some of the data brokers already feel this pressure and will be forced to change their business models unless they want to lose their clients within the EU. Sure there are still EU companies that do business with these data brokers today, but most of them know that they're exposing themselves to considerable risk and are already looking for alternatives.

bryanrasmussen• 6 years ago

EVERYBODY is cheating.

All the big European companies I've worked for seemed to put lots of effort into complying.

arendtio• 6 years ago

So you say, the intent is good, but the execution fails. What is your proposal that serves the same purpose?

gostsamo• 6 years ago

This constitutes denial of justus and you can sue them either in your country or in the European Court of Justus.

082349872349872• 6 years ago

GDPR compliance would be trivial if web browsers used a stateless request-response hypertext transfer protocol.

O Tempora O Mores

gingerlime7• 6 years ago

Data sharing seems so prevalent, and I would dare say even with EU companies, the chances of getting caught (let alone fined) by the GDPR are pretty slim.

An interesting exercise: If you have a Facebook account, go to this page[0] or this one[1] and see if you even recognize some of the companies that shared data about you. Not to mention gave explicit consent to sharing your data ...

My list includes companies I never gave consent to (e.g. Amazon, Uber), never signed up for or gave any details to (e.g. Robinhood, Triplebyte) and some I have zero clue about, but the name alone sounds dodgy (Opteo, Mindshare Biddable Digital ...).

[0] https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=info...

[1] https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/activity_list

villgax2• 6 years ago

This same BS is perpetuated by YC backed Apollo.io by simply scraping public LinkedIn profiles & then masking asterisked emails & numbers(usually your company public numbers) & asking people to sign up.

And when you do request them to remove the same, they ask you to provide ID proof. As if one would provide the same to a company which didn't take your consent for the initial profile data either.

I somehow managed to get hold of the CEO's mail ID got mine removed. But I can only imagine what everyone else would have to do when they want to control their web-presence.

andyzweb• 6 years ago

Maybe post the CEO’s email here so we can all get our data removed as well?

villgax2• 6 years ago

tim

SippinLean• 6 years ago

There are at least 50 data brokers I've had my information removed from. They will say whatever they can--"we need proof," "it's just public information anyway."

Every time I insisted they take it down, right now. Every time they have complied.

There's so many it's basically pulling weeds at this point.

The scarier companies are the ones collecting pictures of your face to train their private facial recognition software.

(Hell I'm hesitant to post HERE because you can't manage the privacy, content or existence of your comments)

rvnx4• 6 years ago

Some data brokers are threatening you with "if you get removed from our database you will be marked as high risk of fraud and your transactions/orders you do online like hotel reservations will get rejected/put on hold for screening".

Well played. Absolutely legal but totally immoral

koheripbal5• 6 years ago

There's so many it's basically pulling weeds at this point.

...and they are often run by the same people. They use shell companies to basically avoid take-down requests.

Their goals is to make it sufficiently annoying to take down your information, that most people give up. While at the same time removing it (regardless of the process) for anyone that occupies them too much time - because your individual data isn't valuable enough to waste defending against a take-down.

I suspect a (faux) lawyers letter is easier to get these takedowns processed than the calls/emails that most people try.

Aerroon5• 6 years ago

And when you do request them to remove the same, they ask you to provide ID proof.

On the other hand, imagine one day you try to log in to your Twitter/Facebook/whatever-the next-big-thing-is and you can't, because the company has deleted all your data upon your request. You didn't make that request though. Someone else did it, claiming to be you.

It gets even worse when you realize that people can request all the data the company has collected of themselves. What happens when somebody impersonates you and requests all of your data?

You need to have some kind of verification method that leads back to a real identity. Otherwise this can be massively abused. I doubt that even asking for a real ID is enough.

1337shadow2• 6 years ago

Ok but he didn't subscribe on that website.

rvnx4• 6 years ago

Electronic signatures tied to your ID.

Don't delete instantly but after X days. Notify owner immediately.

Problem solved.

leereeves• 6 years ago

Would anyone actually be upset to discover that apollo.io was no longer tracking their information?

lucb1e4• 6 years ago

Twitter/Facebook/whatever-the next-big-thing-is doesn't have 9 out of 10 fields that are on my ID card. If I show them a piece of blacked-out plastic with only my first name visible, since that's the only piece of information they have about me, it won't help them identify me.

Yes, you need to prove that you're the data subject matching their records before they should act on your request, whatever that request may be. But uploading a copy of your ID card almost never serves that purpose. See also a bigger comment I wrote elsewhere in this thread with sources and examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23957503

thierryzoller2• 6 years ago

I have a complaint sitting agains Apollo.io as well. I'll make sure to post the outcome here.

gingerlime7• 6 years ago

I've been in touch with a company called Acxiom, who shared my details on Facebook. I've never heard of it, so I submitted a Data subject request to see what they know about me.

They then asked me to provide my address to confirm my identity. Given that I moved quite frequently, and that I'm now asked to share more personal data with a company who's mishandling my data, I wasn't keen on it.

I mentioned that my full name is globally unique, but they refused. I tried to ask them to share some masked data that I can confirm in full (e.g. "give me a partial address and house number, I can give you the full address"). They refused.

They definitely try to make it hard for you, and to dodge responsibility.

culturestate6• 6 years ago

Acxiom is one of the largest (and oldest, they started in the 1970s) data brokers in the world. I think they, like a lot of other creaky corporations, don't necessarily make things difficult on purpose but they...don't go out of their way to make the bureaucracy any more navigable than it has to be.

In other words, it's not a bug, it's an accidental feature.

Ntrails• 6 years ago

They definitely try to make it hard for you, and to dodge responsibility.

Yes, but at the same time you do not want them handing over all your data with zero checks on identity right..?

koheripbal5• 6 years ago

They obviously need to have a process to validate identity, and it's ridiculous to think that they would tailor that process for every request.

It's also odd that you would want to give them your NEW address if they are likely validating against your OLD address.

Why didn't you just give them your OLD address to check against?

icedchai• 6 years ago

There's so many copies of personal data all out there, it would blow your mind. I have a friend who works in this industry. Brokers sell to other brokers who sell to other brokers, who might even sell it back to the original broker after it's been "enriched" with more detail from additional brokers.

I'm a pessimist. You will never remove your personal data. If you get it removed by one company, the others will pop up like mushrooms. Also, from what I've seen, a lot of this information is out-of-date or crap that is just plain wrong.

privchek• 6 years ago

How does this apply to Clearbit which saves the Google Contact list of everyone who installs their extension [0][1] and then sells this data [2] ?

They have >150K extension users, so they are syncing a massive contact list with personal information that they are then selling via their different products like Prospector [3].

[0] https://connect.clearbit.com

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearbit-connect-s...

[2] https://clearbit.com

[3] https://clearbit.com/prospector

Jommi2• 6 years ago

Couldn't find anything on those links or Google about them scraping your contact list.

Would you have any proof or evidence supporting that statement?

PeterisP3• 6 years ago

In this particular case, GDPR can get enforced for the buyers of data.

Rocket Reach and similar companies may be outside the reach of GDPR, however, all the advertisers and global platforms who actually want to target EU customers are within the reach of GDPR so it's illegal for them to buy data from Rocket Reach.

Krasnol• 6 years ago

It's always nice to not find yourself in one of those databases.

Data frugality ftw.

Sebb7674• 6 years ago

We've actually been threatened with a lawsuit because RocketReach displayed some obviously inflated revenue for one of our customers. Luckily, we were able to prove that the numbers were changed recently and threatened to report them for fraud, which ended this pretty quickly.

Seriously shady company.

cutemonster2• 6 years ago

threatened with a lawsuit

I don't understand, who threatened you with a lawsuit? Why did they care about RocketReach?

Sebb7674• 6 years ago

We used a product from a company (I'd prefer not to name them) and received an official letter from them that on of our customers had more than 10 million in revenue, which in turn would require us to buy a larger plan from them[0]. They cited the companies (inofficial) RocketReach page as a source and demanded 30k USD (iirc).

They only retracted the thread after we could prove (via Google Cache and archive.org) that the page was very recently modified to show such a big revenue and threatened to report them for fraud.

We probably could've deflected the case since the company was public and therefore its revenue was also public, but, as a very small company, we had neither time nor money to spare for an useless lawsuit. And we assume that this was their bet. We switched to a competitor after this, obviously.

[0] It later actually turned out that this AGB change was after our purchase and not yet affecting us, but we didn't know that at the time.

paulie_a2• 6 years ago

For most, you can simply ignore it since it doesn't apply anyways

paulie_a2• 6 years ago

I'd to hear why I was downvoted. it is a fact people forget. Most have websites have that stupid cookie notification when 99 don't need to. Here is how to evade the gdpr, ignore it like it doesn't exist

ratherbefuddled• 6 years ago

Lusha in NY does this too except they claim the deletion magically happened automatically because of "algorithms".

I'd made a subject access request because they'd sold my personal email address linked to my business position to random spammers. That association didn't exist in any legitimately accessible data, only in the linkedin data breach.

AndyMcConachie• 6 years ago

The achilles heel of the GDPR is that you must act through a DPA. In the case of the Shrems he had to basically sue the Irish GPA in order for them to do their job. And instead of actually doing their job, the Irish DPA instead fought Shrems on behalf of Facebook.

As an EU citizen and resident, it's abundantly clear to me that getting a DPA to act in my best interest is mostly hopeless. I'm reminded of the CANSPAM Act where a US citizen can send their spam to the FTC and have them investigate it. Only they never will. All spam sent to the FTC just goes into blackhole, and next to no one is ever prosecuted. Even when it's clear who the spammer is.

I don't think many people realize this fact. That a politically motivated entity controls European's access to privacy restitution, and they're rarely motivated to actually do anything. This makes the GDPR is my eyes primarily a joke. It certainly isn't about securing my rights as an EU citizen. It seems more written to benefit lawyers and others who make money because things are complicated.

If the EU actually cared about my privacy rights they would allow all Europeans access to restitution without mediating it through national agencies. I want to be able to hire a lawyer and directly take abusive firms to court over GDPR violations. I shouldn't have to act via some pre-court mediator who gets to arbitrarily determine if my claims have merit.

tzs2• 6 years ago

What about Article 79, "Right to an effective judicial remedy against a controller or processor"? It reads:

Without prejudice to any available administrative or non-judicial remedy, including the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority pursuant to Article 77, each data subject shall have the right to an effective judicial remedy where he or she considers that his or her rights under this Regulation have been infringed as a result of the processing of his or her personal data in non-compliance with this Regulation.
Proceedings against a controller or a processor shall be brought before the courts of the Member State where the controller or processor has an establishment. Alternatively, such proceedings may be brought before the courts of the Member State where the data subject has his or her habitual residence, unless the controller or processor is a public authority of a Member State acting in the exercise of its public powers.

bjornsing2• 6 years ago

Typical of this kind of regulation: the real purpose is less about ensuring individual rights and more about giving bureaucrats more power. The GDPR is great in the latter sense. It’s impossible to predict the outcome of a legal process even if you do your very best to comply, and you can be slapped with incredible fines... Cross the wrong bureaucrat and your days are numbered (in an economic sense).

bjornsing2• 6 years ago

Ops, that was obviously a controversial standpoint. Just to be clear: I’m all for individual rights. But laws need to have predictable consequences and be fairly and equally enforced, and my impression is that the GDPR is not. As an example I’m pretty sure the local court here in Malmö, Sweden has violated my rights under the GDPR. Do you think anybody would give a rats ass if I complained? I highly doubt it...

samus4• 6 years ago

It might depend on the country, but Austrian authorities treat GDPR compliance very seriously. Even if the authorities got away, such cases make for embarassing press coverage and can threaten precarious coalitions, especially when elections are close.

StopHammoTime• 6 years ago

Fundamentally the thing which everyone is missing is that the regulatory authorities can simply say that the data can not be used within the European Union by Rocket Reach. They may not be in the European Union but they can make their product useless in the European Union.

rovek• 6 years ago

I had a similar experience with a company called RateSetter.

- They email me some marketing

- I respond with DSAR

- They acknowledge receipt of DSAR

- 6 months pass

- I bump the email thread

- They respond saying they have deleted my data as per my request (I requested access, not deletion)

- I point this out

- They apologise and offer £100 to drop the complaint

- I refuse and complain to ICO

- Obviously nothing happens

GDPR is toothless.

perch56• 6 years ago

I had a very similar experience with Apollo.io. Somehow my professional data (business email, personal phone number, name, job title and my LinkedIn network and connections) ended up on this website without my consent. I’m assuming it was collected from several sources such as LinkedIn (Even though I had my privacy settings tight) and some conferences I attended in the past year. Either way I contacted them and they sent me a document to confirm my identity and then proceeded to remove my data from their website after I sent it back. I was a bit shocked as it’s basically asking to confirm my identity and give them more information about me when I haven’t even granted them permission in the first place. Such “data brokers” need to be regulated. The most annoying thing is that they only remove data under GDPR, CCPA if I am a resident of California, UK or EEA. Well what if I’m from a country that doesn’t fall under one of those 2 regulations?

Jommi2• 6 years ago

Vote for a better government that cares about its citizens digital rights?

EGreg• 6 years ago

I figured that the European Union would simply act to block such a website from being resolved in Europe by DNS resolvers?

fmajid3• 6 years ago

Yes, it's hard for EU authorities to enforce its laws on a company that has no EU presence or revenues to threaten. At least the Luxembourg DPA is doing something about it, unlike the Irish DPA that deliberately does nothing (or worse, colludes with Facebook to help them skirt GDPR with highly dubious and most likely legally invalid semantic contortions).

askjdlkasdjsd2• 6 years ago

Is crunchbase/owler/cb insights and every other public data aggregator/lead generator service also illegal by the same logic?

dgellow• 6 years ago

I hope so...

jiveturkey• 6 years ago

define illegal.

and no, those aggregators don't process PII / Personal Data.

askjdlkasdjsd2• 6 years ago

They typically have a person's different social media account links and work history. Isn't that personal data?

dasdasd22• 6 years ago

Another company collecting and selling your personal data right there in Silicon Valley: https://eightfold.ai

jalonso510• 6 years ago

The Privacy Shield framework that was just declared invalid by the EU included a requirement that US companies make themselves available for arbitration of disputes brought by EU data subjects. GDPR by itself doesn't include that concept. But if GDPR is going to be enforceable, the negotiation around a successor to Privacy Shield should probably include it.

indziektor• 6 years ago

I don't know if there's another good example, but Poland fined an EU company under the GDPR for scraping profile data without giving proper notification: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19530087

You shouldn't have to guess where your personal data is going, and how it's being used. When the GDPR was first coming into force, I remember getting bombarded with all these notification emails from all these companies coming out of the woodwork that I didn't recognize. But I don't think I've ever been notified by email, SMS, phone or smoke signal since then.

The biggest flaw of the GDPR in my opinion is that it leaves the definition of what's considered personal identifying information with too much wiggle-room for creative interpretation. Maybe it's hard to pin down exactly, but there's often too much emphasis on the word "identifying", as if it's otherwise OK to gather every intimate online detail and build a profile that is a unique identity in and of itself. It's even worse when real-world decisions can be based on it without your knowledge.

I recently had my own rude awakening learning about these data brokers and risk analysis services. The matter itself was relatively trivial, but I didn't realize the extent of this before and the scope of what personal information they're gathering. And it doesn't matter if you think it won't affect you, since you've done nothing wrong. From what I read elsewhere, even exercising fundamental consumer rights may be held against you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440526

gsnedders2• 6 years ago

The biggest flaw of the GDPR in my opinion is that it leaves the definition of what's considered personal identifying information with too much wiggle-room for creative interpretation.

Note that this is the totally normal approach for Civil Law systems: you define the general principles of what the menace is, and leave it down to the courts to determine whether or not those principles have been violated. In essence, you can view it as every case being decided on the basis of the mischief rule as exists in many Common Law systems.

jtbayly• 6 years ago

Instead of pursuing Rocketreach locally on that basis alone, the CNPD just gives up arguing it has no jurisdiction in the US.

Which is true and obvious. Why anybody ever thought the GDPR would have teeth outside the EU is beyond me. It was always laughable to me that anybody believed that the EU had made a law that applied to every company in every country in the world.

csense• 6 years ago

I've always wondered about the practical side of how GDPR is supposed to work for companies outside the EU.

If you've got actual stuff in the EU, it's easy. You get fined under GDPR and if you never show up to argue your side in court or an administrative hearing or whatever, they seize your real estate or bank accounts or physical servers or whatever, and sell it to pay your fines.

If you're US-based, how does it work? Hmm, if you're a modern shop you probably have stuff hosted by big companies, like servers on Amazon's AWS or code on Microsoft's Github. Then the EU could presumably tell those companies to stop hosting your stuff, or they'll become liable for fines as an accessory to the violation. Microsoft and Amazon probably have a lot of bank accounts and physical stuff in the EU that could be seized and sold, so they couldn't simply ignore the fine. They'll probably drop you as a customer immediately once Europe starts making them pay fines, and maybe try to sue you in the US court system to try to recover those costs.

I've never heard of this happening though. So maybe this isn't actually a thing.

If all your stuff is on US soil, and you're careful not to use providers with any European presence, how would they do it? Does the EU have some way to order all European ISP's to blackhole traffic from your company's IP ranges? When your executives come to Europe for vacation or conferences or whatever, could they get hauled off the plane in handcuffs and taken to a European jail over your company's GDPR violations?

Again, I haven't heard of this actually happening. But it seems to me that would be how they'd do it, if they really wanted to prevent overseas companies from simply ignoring GDPR.

If there's no threat of enforcement, why bother with GDPR at all, unless you're planning on having seizable stuff like real estate or bank accounts or physical servers in Europe someday?

How to effectively evade the GDPR and the reach of the DPA

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