Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

baekdal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 468 posts

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#301

Post by downandout »

Jommi wrote: post #299
downandout wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the best thing to do if you don’t have a high percentage of EU users/customers is to simply block EU IPs. First it was the completely useless cookie notifications, now it’s GDPR, and nobody knows what the next thing will be - we only know that there will be a next thing (there always is), and that it too will be costly and burdensome to comply with. Unless you derive a significant percentage of your revenue…

I love this comment. Waiting for people to take the bait and reply to you!

Take the bait? I’m not saying anything controversial. A large percentage of websites are directed at the home country of their owners anyway, and EU traffic is often incidental and worthless to them. A US dentist or doctor likely has no interest in receiving appointments from people in the EU, for example. An online store based in the US, who would have to charge outlandish shipping rates to ship to the EU, is unlikely to get orders from the EU and thus should have no interest in that traffic. An online message board where nurses in a US city talk to each other probably wouldn’t want to spend the money to comply with GDPR even if the occasional nurse from the EU might pop in with an interesting comment every now and then.

So EU traffic means nothing to any of the above example sites, yet all of them will be massively exposed under the GDPR. If I ran a web hosting company, I’d offer EU IP blocking as an optional, free service.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#302

Post by downandout »

diamondlovesyou wrote: post #300
downandout wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the best thing to do if you don’t have a high percentage of EU users/customers is to simply block EU IPs. First it was the completely useless cookie notifications, now it’s GDPR, and nobody knows what the next thing will be - we only know that there will be a next thing (there always is), and that it too will be costly and burdensome to comply with. Unless you derive a significant percentage of your revenue…

Ehhhh, I'd leave it as is. Unless you have business licenses in EU countries, EU laws have no legal authority over you. If you do have such licenses, then you're probably big enough to foot the bill and possibly also can't afford to not foot the bill (due to suspended licenses). This privacy thing is, like, their option, man. Even if you and I agree with the EU.

I’ve been looking into this, as I run several sites myself, and apparently this isn’t true. They can go after you even if you have no EU presence, and US courts will domesticate any EU judgment against you for fines levied under it.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#303

Post by dbg31415 »

So pretty much every page is going to get a "loading page" again where users have to confirm if they will allow Google Analytics, etc. to be used? And probably a warning about cookies? That's how this is going to play out, yeah? At least for sites that fall under it.

Not sure that really accomplishes the intent... seems like it'll just be an annoyance to all non-cookied users.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#304

Post by Kelbit »

downandout wrote: post #296
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #14

GDPR articles seem to be getting some traction on HN as everyone is trying to figure out: "Do I need to do something for this? Is so, what?" For a recent project I read (and translated to plain english) [1] every single article in the GDPR legislation and for our purposes it can be summed up as: "Treat user data like names and emails as if they were credit card numbers" AKA: be paranoid about keeping them, encrypt th…

Honestly, the best thing to do if you don’t have a high percentage of EU users/customers is to simply block EU IPs. First it was the completely useless cookie notifications, now it’s GDPR, and nobody knows what the next thing will be - we only know that there will be a next thing (there always is), and that it too will be costly and burdensome to comply with. Unless you derive a significant percentage of your revenue…

The EU has a population of over half a billion people and a GDP per capita of $41k PPP (although those numbers will shrink a little bit post-Brexit). Ignoring Europe as a potential market ignores half the western world - and it is westerners, for the most part, who have disposable income to spend money on goods and services.

Ignore Europe if you like. Just be aware that you are allowing your competitors to gain an uncontested foothold without having to fight for it. Once they are the incumbent in the European market, they will be hard to unseat, even if you change your mind later.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#305

Post by downandout »

Kelbit wrote: post #304
downandout wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the best thing to do if you don’t have a high percentage of EU users/customers is to simply block EU IPs. First it was the completely useless cookie notifications, now it’s GDPR, and nobody knows what the next thing will be - we only know that there will be a next thing (there always is), and that it too will be costly and burdensome to comply with. Unless you derive a significant percentage of your revenue…

The EU has a population of over half a billion people and a GDP per capita of $41k PPP (although those numbers will shrink a little bit post-Brexit). Ignoring Europe as a potential market ignores half the western world - and it is westerners, for the most part, who have disposable income to spend money on goods and services. Ignore Europe if you like. Just be aware that you are allowing your competitors to gain an un…

There are thousands of types of sites, such as geographically focused message boards, local professionals, smaller ecommerce sites, etc. who are exposed under the GDPR but for whom EU traffic is incidental and worth nothing. A US plumber doesn’t need or want appointments in London, but is technically exposed under the GDPR. So for businesses like this, blocking EU traffic should be an easy decision - there is no downside.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#306

Post by TeMPOraL »

downandout wrote: post #296
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #14

GDPR articles seem to be getting some traction on HN as everyone is trying to figure out: "Do I need to do something for this? Is so, what?" For a recent project I read (and translated to plain english) [1] every single article in the GDPR legislation and for our purposes it can be summed up as: "Treat user data like names and emails as if they were credit card numbers" AKA: be paranoid about keeping them, encrypt th…

Honestly, the best thing to do if you don’t have a high percentage of EU users/customers is to simply block EU IPs. First it was the completely useless cookie notifications, now it’s GDPR, and nobody knows what the next thing will be - we only know that there will be a next thing (there always is), and that it too will be costly and burdensome to comply with. Unless you derive a significant percentage of your revenue…

> First it was the completely useless cookie notifications

It was useless in the sense it was trying to play nice. It was a gentle call for the industry to self-regulate. The only problem with that law was how naïve it was.

Go ahead and block the whole European IP range. See if we care.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#307

Post by ec109685 »

mgiannopoulos wrote: post #83

The author claims that for one-time visitors you're not supposed to have any 3rd-party tracking code but uses Google Analytics which Ghostery counts as a tracking code. How's that going to work out for practically every site in the world?

The author is wrong.

You just do what google does and ask for consent before providing access to the site. The user doesn’t need to log in to consent. Once consented, the site can set a cookie. Then that user becomes part of your “Full interaction users” bucket.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#308

Post by ec109685 »

going_to_800 wrote: post #287

This article is not totally accurate. For ex. you can track anon visitors fine if you generate an ID identifiable ONLY on your DB. So if you store only an ID in the DB(awaiting to be matched when a conversion is made with consent given) is totally fine because even if someone hacks your DB can't be able to match that ID to any person, even if they have other data from Facebook, Google etc. In case of an IP it's a dif…

How are you tying your ID and the user? If it’s a cookie, you need to get consent and let the user view and rectify information tied to that ID.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#309

Post by TeMPOraL »

dominotw wrote: post #298
mstolpm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d add: Get (documented, active) permission of users to store and use their data, understand that permission is given only for a defined cause/usage (and not indefinitely for everything you right now might not even think of), be prepared to tell users what data you store about them, why and (briefly) how it is used. Be prepared to delete user data on request. Be prepared to show documentation on how you handle the (…

> without given user consent. you mean just create a checkbox somewhere that people click without thinking about it? I have no idea what I am consenting to when I "agree" to all the EULAs.

Read up. Consent under GDPR is like you've never seen before, but like (as a private citizen) you've always dreamed of.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#310

Post by drewmol »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #255
gowld wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "strictly" defined? I'm going to guess it's define as "the magistrate knows it when it sees it", so take to be both "don't use the most egregious interpretation", and "don't be a populist punching bad that governments can make hay out of attacking".

Strictly has a pretty clear definition. If you can provide a service strictly devoid of the PII it means there is no logical necessity for PII. You can't provide a call-waiting service without a phone number, but you can provide a mail-redirection service without one even though it makes it easier to administer when you have a customer phone number, you can strictly provide (and bill/administer) the service when that…

from molf's comment: >The alternative is to only collect data that is strictly necessary to provide the service.

While I agree with your comment, I suspect that for any given law firm, paramTotalHours_Billable(SubjectID = necessary) will be a much larger value.

Post reply on HN