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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

#201

Post by danpalmer »

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…

My "feels like its not that big of a deal" is based on my own companies approach, legal advice I've seen, and internal training.

I realise that Pinterest is large and I'm sure they have sought legal advice, but that doesn't stop this coming across as an overreaction, if one assumes that they _aren't_ using the data in ways that explicitly violate the rights granted by the GDPR.

Now if they are explicitly violating those rights, that's another story! I'd rather attribute it to ignorance than malice though.

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

#202

Post by celticninja »

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…

Probably worth reading this.

https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria

EU agencies would prefer compliance over fines and would work with businesses to help them. As the article suggests, prosecution/fines will come when all other avenues are exhausted not the starting point.

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

#203

Post by danpalmer »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #140
jacquesm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

hmmm... If I had an instapaper account it would be interesting to submit a GDPR request tomorrow, and see what kind of reply I got. Now I don't, but I'm sure there are plenty of other interested people around.

In all likelihood, the answer from most companies would be "sorry we don't yet have the ability to provide that data, it's on the roadmap, you'll have to wait".

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

#204

Post by celticninja »

merinowool wrote: post #145
pembrook wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> would be a potential target of regulators looking to establish precedents of enforcement with a big name. Shouldn't law apply equally to everyone? One could have thought that setting an example "to show them!" wouldn't have occurred in a civilised country.

https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria

Setting an example is how the US regulators work, not so much the EU.

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

#205

Post by downandout »

celticninja wrote: post #202
pembrook wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Probably worth reading this. https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria EU agencies would prefer compliance over fines and would work with businesses to help them. As the article suggests, prosecution/fines will come when all other avenues are exhausted not the starting point.

Says some random dude on the Internet that seems to be a tremendous fan of GDPR. I prefer to base my understanding of laws on the text of the law. This one says that no warnings are required and that fines can be up to 20M EUR.

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

#206

Post by kevingrahl »

latk wrote: post #62
mantas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freezing account if it seems to be owned by EU citizen? GDPR applies to all EU citizens regardless of their location after all.

GDPR applies if (1) the Controller or a Processor is “established” in the EU, or if (2) the Subject is in the EU. Citizenship doesn't matter, and geoblocking is the legally correct solution. As an example: U.S. tourists on a trip to Paris are protected by the GDPR, but a Polish expat in California is not. (See Art. 3 GDPR https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ )

I really don’t think your example holds up.

> US tourists on a trip to Paris are protected by the GDPR

That’s not entirely correct. They’d fall under GDPR if they do business with a company doing business in the EU (eg by buying something off of amazon and sending it to their Paris hotel address. They would however not benefit from GDPR if they were to order something from amazon but sending it to their US address instead.

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

#207

Post by celticninja »

bthdonohue wrote: post #43
Angostura wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as The Verge says in the article: 'While we don’t know exactly what’s holding up Instapaper' I'm naturally curious as to what's holding up Instapaper. As you say, your Privacy Policy is very good, other than the disclaimer that says 'we may pass your personal data to others - who knows what they do with it eh?'. I imagine that this is the issue which is holding you up.

The scope of work for GDPR was underestimated by me, we were not able to complete that work for the deadline on Friday, and this was the required alternative. We are working very hard to minimize the service interruption.

The law says you need to work toward a solution, it isn't a cliff edge thing where you are immediately legally liable. Are you just not wanting to risk it or do you not read the law in this way?

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

#208

Post by justboxing »

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…

> Your current reaction seems like a huge and unnecessary

It's most likely action based on what their suits (Lawyers) recommended, and not a reaction.

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

#209

Post by danpalmer »

EpicEng wrote: post #173
merinowool wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how they could persuade if they won't go after lower visibility infringers? I can't follow your logic.

No one said "they won't go after small timers". Hitting the big players hard makes everyone wary of violating and they will absolutely catch some small fish as well. It's just silly to expect any enforcement body to go after everyone equally. It doesn't even make sense; company A has data on 1.5B people, company B has data on 27 people and the owner's mother. Why would you go after B before A?

They have said this.

a) they have said they don't want to punish companies for the sake of it, they want to use it as an incentive to fundamentally change the approach to the handling of user data. This means not suing tiny companies for more money than they are worth.

b) they have said that the standards will roughly increase with the size of the company and resources it has. A company with 27 users (and few employees) would not be expected to have a data protection officer, or many of the control processes that a company with data on 1.5B people.

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

#210

Post by kevingrahl »

x0x0 wrote: post #81
Angostura wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as The Verge says in the article: 'While we don’t know exactly what’s holding up Instapaper' I'm naturally curious as to what's holding up Instapaper. As you say, your Privacy Policy is very good, other than the disclaimer that says 'we may pass your personal data to others - who knows what they do with it eh?'. I imagine that this is the issue which is holding you up.

The GDPR fines based on global revenues. I'd bet Pinterest is very risk averse given how little money they make from Instapaper.

Global revenue of the parent company!
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