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Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

theverge.com

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Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#101

Post by pembrook »

danpalmer wrote: post #97
bthdonohue wrote: post #5

Hey all – Brian from Instapaper here. We worked really hard to try to avoid a service interruption in the EU, but unfortunately we were unable to. We continue to work hard to ensure that the service interruption is as brief as possible. Let me know if you have any questions...

I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of this than necessary, unless you’re doing some shady stuff with our data. From what I can tell from various legal advice that I’ve read, as long as you’re working on implementing the changes, and have been following security best practices, nothing really changes on May 25th, and you’ll be able to take your time to become fully compliant, as long as you can demonstrate th…

Instapaper is owned by Pinterest. Pinterest is a large high profile company with millions of European users and would be a potential target of regulators looking to establish precedents of enforcement with a big name.

I highly doubt this decision was made lightly and was probably informed by actual legal professionals with knowledge of the regulators in question and not the 3rd party opinion of some guy on the internet who "feels like its not that big of a deal."

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#102

Post by hobbe80 »

taysic wrote: post #77
Fradow wrote: post #9

Obviously, IANAL, but my company talked to a few over the past week. This move is, in my opinion, a bad read on the odds and European culture. First, culture. The goal (at least in France, but that's probably the same in other countries) is to get you in compliance, NOT to fine you. What this means is that before you get lawsuit and fines, someone will talk to you and work with you to see how you can get compliant. S…

Running on 'i would be really surprised if', and 'aren't likely to be' aren't really how businesses work.

Risk management is part of every decision a business faces, legal or compliance risks aren't any different. Can we risk the CEO and chairman travelling on the same airplane? Can we risk having our disaster recovery site in the same city as our main? Same country? Same continent? Can we risk buying all this trends-sensitive inventory? Etc.

(Potential savings or revenue) - (Somewhat easy to calculate cost) * (Difficult to assess risk) = Profit. More or less.

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#103

Post by dmix »

princekolt wrote: post #78
bthdonohue wrote: post #5

Hey all – Brian from Instapaper here. We worked really hard to try to avoid a service interruption in the EU, but unfortunately we were unable to. We continue to work hard to ensure that the service interruption is as brief as possible. Let me know if you have any questions...

You know that you're still liable for European customer's data, even if you're offline, right? Going offline won't change anything. You can't effectively grab the database and run away.

It still seems like the safest option given the massive risk this legislation is exposing companies. Especially low margin per user businesses like Instapaper. From The Verge:

> because it’s not entirely clear right now what information residents will request, what format that information needs to be in, how to locate it and package it, and whether new infrastructure needs to be created to manage this request pipeline.

So in the meantime they can at least stop the flow of new data from the EU into their system until they are 'compliant' and have systems in place to deal with the existing large amount of EU users/data they already have.

It makes sense to me to be cautious here, plus it has the dual benefit of drawing attention to the real costs/risks the bill has on smaller firms without teams of lawyers and internal human resources (developers, CSRs) to deal with the new obligations imposed on them.

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#104

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sebazzz wrote: post #17
Fradow wrote: post #9

Obviously, IANAL, but my company talked to a few over the past week. This move is, in my opinion, a bad read on the odds and European culture. First, culture. The goal (at least in France, but that's probably the same in other countries) is to get you in compliance, NOT to fine you. What this means is that before you get lawsuit and fines, someone will talk to you and work with you to see how you can get compliant. S…

As far as I understand the grace period was the last two years. Tomorrow is the big day. But whether or not that it is true, I believe that if Europeans have used Instapaper and they now temporarily shut off access they still are not compliant and in violation of the law. Because they did serve Europeans, so they have their data.

The law doesn’t actually target Europeans, but anyone in Europe. Since it is based on geolocation rather than nationality, not being in Europe might be relevant legally (IANAL).

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#105

Post by guelo »

jacquesm wrote: post #98
bthdonohue wrote: post #5

Hey all – Brian from Instapaper here. We worked really hard to try to avoid a service interruption in the EU, but unfortunately we were unable to. We continue to work hard to ensure that the service interruption is as brief as possible. Let me know if you have any questions...

I'm sorry, I don't buy it. (1) you still hold the data, you are still required to comply with the law and cutting off access does not change that one bit. (2) the period for a response is long enough that once you would receive requests you could handle them in time even if you processed them manually. (3) you have been - or should have been - aware of all this for a very long time, either you failed at estimating th…

I don't know if (1) is true but the data was collected under previous laws. In my opinion laws like this should not be retroactive. Retroactive laws, especially when affecting billions of dollars of commerce, are unfair and draconian.

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#106

Post by jacquesm »

pembrook wrote: post #101
danpalmer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of this than necessary, unless you’re doing some shady stuff with our data. From what I can tell from various legal advice that I’ve read, as long as you’re working on implementing the changes, and have been following security best practices, nothing really changes on May 25th, and you’ll be able to take your time to become fully compliant, as long as you can demonstrate th…

Instapaper is owned by Pinterest. Pinterest is a large high profile company with millions of European users and would be a potential target of regulators looking to establish precedents of enforcement with a big name. I highly doubt this decision was made lightly and was probably informed by actual legal professionals with knowledge of the regulators in question and not the 3rd party opinion of some guy on the intern…

But he's spot on about contacting the regulators because they already know they won't be in compliance.

Now would be a good time to do just that, and if the actual legal professionals thought it was a good idea to ban EU citizens but keep their data then maybe they should get better lawyers because that certainly won't work.

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#107

Post by jacquesm »

guelo wrote: post #105
jacquesm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I don't buy it. (1) you still hold the data, you are still required to comply with the law and cutting off access does not change that one bit. (2) the period for a response is long enough that once you would receive requests you could handle them in time even if you processed them manually. (3) you have been - or should have been - aware of all this for a very long time, either you failed at estimating th…

I don't know if (1) is true but the data was collected under previous laws. In my opinion laws like this should not be retroactive. Retroactive laws, especially when affecting billions of dollars of commerce, are unfair and draconian.

The law has been on the books for two years, it just wasn't enforced and for a long time before that there was another law with much the same effect. So even if the data was collected under previous laws there is not much that would convince me that denying the users access to their data or to the legally mandated data life-cycle features is the right thing to do.

In fact that attitude goes exactly against what the law is trying to achieve in the first place.

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#108

Post by [deleted] »

hobbe80 wrote: post #102
taysic wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running on 'i would be really surprised if', and 'aren't likely to be' aren't really how businesses work.

Risk management is part of every decision a business faces, legal or compliance risks aren't any different. Can we risk the CEO and chairman travelling on the same airplane? Can we risk having our disaster recovery site in the same city as our main? Same country? Same continent? Can we risk buying all this trends-sensitive inventory? Etc. (Potential savings or revenue) - (Somewhat easy to calculate cost) * (Difficult…

[deleted]

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#109

Post by enedil »

nemothekid wrote: post #80
Fradow wrote: post #9

Obviously, IANAL, but my company talked to a few over the past week. This move is, in my opinion, a bad read on the odds and European culture. First, culture. The goal (at least in France, but that's probably the same in other countries) is to get you in compliance, NOT to fine you. What this means is that before you get lawsuit and fines, someone will talk to you and work with you to see how you can get compliant. S…

> Well, at least that's my read on the situation. And that's how I intend to do it: pro-actively work into getting in compliance without rushing it too much, and handle things properly as they come. A lot of the responses to the GDPR shutdowns have been like this - "you don't need to shutdown, because you won't be fined yet." But I have to ask, isn't shutting down a better alternative to knowingly breaking the law? W…

It's a really old debate.

If I understand correctly what law is, I would say that lawmakers make some laws to express what is moral and what's not (according to them), but not always it's true that our moral standards are completely different from the lawmakers'. If the objective is to be moral, then we should ditch contradicting laws.

Re: Instapaper is temporarily shutting off access for European users due to GDPR

#110

Post by 317070 »

guelo wrote: post #105
jacquesm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I don't buy it. (1) you still hold the data, you are still required to comply with the law and cutting off access does not change that one bit. (2) the period for a response is long enough that once you would receive requests you could handle them in time even if you processed them manually. (3) you have been - or should have been - aware of all this for a very long time, either you failed at estimating th…

I don't know if (1) is true but the data was collected under previous laws. In my opinion laws like this should not be retroactive. Retroactive laws, especially when affecting billions of dollars of commerce, are unfair and draconian.

It is not retroactive, the law has been there for 2 years, becoming _active_ in 40 minutes. Secondly, it is not the collection of data, it is the storing of data. So if you store the data without user confirmation in 40 minutes, there might be a problem. The action which is the problem is the storing of private data.

There is nothing retroactive here.

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