How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#201

Post by solomatov » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:16 AM UTC

antoncohen wrote: post #94

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…

>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.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#202

Post by solomatov » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:20 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #181

Slartie wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

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..

This is very easy to work around. Associate each user with an encryption key and store in a separate database which backed up with some retention time. It shouldn't be huge so that's not a big problem. Encrypt all data related to the user with this key. When you make a backup, this data is stored in the same encrypted form. When you delete user, just delete his record together with this key. After this the user's data is virtually irretrievable and for all practical purposes is deleted.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#203

Post by josephg » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:20 AM UTC

FridgeSeal wrote: post #195

spydum wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

This is not an unsolvable problem. Does your data not have a lifetime anyways? Do you really need to store everything forever? If you have system that just tracks changes and one that occasionally records full state, after you delete someone from prod you could simply overwrite old full-state backups with your new, post-deletion backup and update your change-only backups to replace data about that user with `deleted`…

There is also a pretty easy cryptographic solution for your offline backups:

In your backup, encrypt each user's data using a per-user key (AES or something). The keys will be tiny, so you can store the keys in a hot database. When a user deletes their account, simply purge the user's key.

Tada - like magic all of that user's data on your tape backups has turned into unreadable noise.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#204

Post by solomatov » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:21 AM UTC

justinjlynn wrote: post #198

cbr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 w…

A similar scheme is used to erase data on SSD. Otherwise, you can't reliably delete any data from them.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#205

Post by FridgeSeal » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:23 AM UTC

danarmak wrote: post #8

> 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?

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.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#206

Post by solomatov » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:25 AM UTC

antoncohen wrote: post #127

bjl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 th…

> Fine, we now have an engineer building GDPR features instead of features that benefit our customers.

GDPR benefits customers. What you say is similar to justifying not to provide good security with the reason to benefit customers or justifying not to provide safety features in cars. After all, it happens not that often.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#207

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:29 AM UTC

M2Ys4U wrote: post #124

pascalxus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#208

Post by FridgeSeal » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:32 AM UTC

0x27081990 wrote: post #20

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

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.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#209

Post by kobeya » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:33 AM UTC

somenewacc wrote: post #185

kobeya wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholders filing lawsuits because the company refused to give away money to a fine?

Shareholders filing lawsuits because the company refused to follow the EU law

Which would harm them... how?

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#210

Post by taysic » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:35 AM UTC

mzzter wrote: post #197

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) [201…

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?