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GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

monal.im

741–750 of 957 posts

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wording was awkward, but I think the meaning is clear. "...in the EU--the union of countries primarily located in a continent that..." ? And what am I missing? They were dictators of Spain and Greece respectively. There are millions of people who can remember their rule alive in those EU countries today. What changed in the last fifty years to make a recurrence impossible? Turkey narrowly missed joining, and it's…

The threat of being suspended from the EU and the (potential) economic damage from that? You can’t be a dictatorship and keep the same rights in the union, as per the Copenhagen criteria and Article 7. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria#Political_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_Eur...

Article 7 doesn't seem to mean anything does it?

Spain just crushed a political movement trying to organise a referendum through force. It arrested the leaders and the rest of the EU is helping them catch the ones that fled. They call it a rebellion and state that Catalonia can never be independent.

Not an Article 7 violation, apparently. According to the EU it's merely an internal matter.

Hungary elects a government by a wide margin, it's a popular government, and the government reflects its people's disagreement with EU policies that aren't in any treaties and weren't in anything Hungary previously agreed to. This is apparently a violation of "rule of law" and "not democracy".

The EU's definition of democracy is anything that helps the EU, simple as that.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#742
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they are over-reacting. For example, IP addresses are considered personal information but what that means is you just can't blindly collect them. If the service you use relies on IP addresses as a basic point of operation then its fine. CDNs aren't going out of business for example.

> that means is you just can't blindly collect them Genuinely curious, what about all of the web servers that log every request which usually by default includes the client IP? Not doing anything special with the IP, they are just there in log files and archives.

Personally, I'll activate anonymization of ip addresses in my logs coming next week. There are various solutions for that available.

I think you can also log the ip, you just have to get your user's explicit consent.

I will also remove Google Analytics, and switch AdSense to contextual ads. I am a bit worried about the latter step, but if the losses are too great I can still try to get consent from my visitors and switch to personalized ads again. As for Google Analytics, I never did get that much out of it, but perhaps I should have used it more. I never activated the "deep personalization" options in GA to begin with.

It bothers me to pester my visitors with consent popups. On the other hand, looking at what Google proposes for compliant AdSense, it also bothers me that apparently multiple companies get to track my users if I enable personalized ads. I wasn't really aware of that, and just accepted Google as tracking because they know everything anyway.

So much as I dislike the new privacy laws, at least the made me reconsider my AdSense settings.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#743
"Data Protection Officer

I do not have the resources to hire a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or EU Representative as required by GDPR. I do not have designated EU contacts."

What? Where does it say in the law that:

a, you need one

b, it cannot be you

I mean come on, this is just a very ignorant post from the author.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#744
post #571

While this developer may be overreacting (he probably doesn't need a DPO), i understand why it might just be easier to block it , at least until there are precedents about how to comply and more info on how the regulation will be enforced. GDPR can be scary for developers, because nobody actually knows how a website or app is supposed to work (I have yet to see a single example), and it requires a series of steps tha…

> The example of the cookie law (for which it's hard to argue that it has not utterly failed) should act as a bad precedent, not a good one. It is an utter failure but mostly because services try hard to turn it into a travesty and simultaneously manage to deceive their users by attributing blame for the annoying cookie warnings to regulators. "We are required by law to show you this stupid warning because our site u…

If a law can be so easily circumvented, does not provide an alternate solution and fails to effect any change at all, then it's a failed law and a bad law, regardless of good intentions.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#745
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that means is you just can't blindly collect them Genuinely curious, what about all of the web servers that log every request which usually by default includes the client IP? Not doing anything special with the IP, they are just there in log files and archives.

`tail /var/log/nginx/access.log` Oops. Also the section of the GDPR that talks about pseudonymization using a token how should my user DB table be GDPR compliant? Contains ID (primary key), username, password hash, email, etc and the ID is also in other DB tables for obvious reasons (such as user posts/actions).

I think it can simply be GDPR compliant if you inform your users that you are saving that data in your database, and they give you the explicit OK to do to. Explicit consent meaning they tick a checkbox saying "I understand that page x is saving the data y in a database and I am OK with it".

If you have a site where users can make posts, I'd say they pretty much give you consent by signing up. IANAL, though.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#746
post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I'm pretty sure they still stick the toys inside the eggs everywhere except the US. Perhaps a European can correct me on this assumption. EDIT: Turns out the US-style kinder eggs are indeed available outside the US.

They marketed it as a new thing beside the original here in Germany. Most people seem to prefer the original, though. They lost a lot of charm by going from toy+edible+tinfoil to plastic+toy+plastic+edible+plastic spoon+plastic.

The new one is even more sweet and rich than the eggs (more like a dessert than a snack) and harder to eat for a young child, so not surprising.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#747
post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment is about the proportionality of the response, the choice the author is making and what the commenter thinks about it. When something is banned outright, there is no choice and no proportionality. So, no, it's not particularly responsive nor analogous.

Same as the ban on the cheese wasn't a ban on "cheese" it was a ban on "cheese made with this manner" the regulations being shown here aren't a ban on "collecting/using personal information" it's a ban on "collecting/using personal information this manner" Again cost / benefit is always a valid choice to operate somewhere.

The conversation was about whether the response was proportionate to (what the commenter felt was) a small imposition. You can't just change the degree of imposition from a small one to a really severe one and then claim it's 'the same'. It's only the same if you possess the enviable mental quickness to find not-the-same things the same. You're right that I don't.

If you cancel an appointment because you stubbed your toe, many people will consider that response unreasonable. If you did it because a pterodactyl flew in and bit off your head, lightning thought process and all, fewer people would.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are so many commenters on HN presuming that companies that struggle to comply with the regulation are doing something shady with user data? You are aware that there is a time and monetary cost to comply for those with legitimate data collection purposes, right?

They struggle with it for the same reason people on the political left always struggle to understand why some people oppose new regulations: the question of whether and how to regulate commercial activities is always a proxy for deeper underlying differences in how people view the world. GDPR is just a proxy fight between the left and the right and is showing all the same characteristics. Consider adventured's siblin…

Interestingly enough, GDPR gets the most support from the center-right parties within the EU, in my experience because it's a law that protects individual's rights to their data. You'll find that it's not that popular among the left-wing member parties.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the UK's interpretation of GDPR. What about France or Poland, or any of the other countries? I suppose it depends where in Europe he would like to visit

There's no "UK Interpretation", this is the whole point of the EU. The rules apply across the block.

EU law doesn't work like that. Each country has to pass their own local law to enforce the GDPR. For the UK that was the Data Protection Bill 2017.

Re: GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent this week doing compliance for my small business customers, the cost is not zero but it's really not much at all - I've done full compliance for six companies and it cost less than £250 each (one of those clients is a large NGO). This guy doesn't like regulation and is playing to the crowd for sympathy.

Is that £250 each just for GDPR compliance? That's one law in one region. Now multiply it by the number of legislative bodies worldwide and the number of relevant laws passed by each - how much does that cost?

If a business doesn't want to be compliant with the laws of all ~200 sovereign states in the world, they're most welcome to just select a single one and do business there (not the US though, as laws often change for each state so that's right out the door). I'm sure the competitors in the space will love having one fewer competitor.
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