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

Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

blog.lukaszolejnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 507 posts

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#161

Post by SippinLean »

mulmen wrote: post #132

Chrome has been the new IE for years. "just use chrome" is an endless refrain from webdevs who don't want to test on Firefox. Not sure why it is so hard for people to see what is going on here. Google has a massive conflict of interest with their web development efforts. This is classic Microsoft-esque Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Safari is the new IE, Chrome has been responsible for a huge number of positive changes in the browser landscape.

I develop in Chrome because that's where the majority of our conversions come from.

I (my QA team) also tests Safari, Firefox and other browsers where a significant number of conversions come from. I never heard "just use chrome" in any professional environment.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#162

Post by manigandham »

https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1044109898013765632

> My teammates made this change to prevent surprises in a shared device scenario. In the past, people would sometimes sign out of the content area and think that meant they were no longer signed into Chrome, which could cause problems on a shared device

I can see why there is pushback against this, but the issue described above is also understandable. There are valid reasons why "average" users would rather have this, and having unsynced or completely mismatched logins between Chrome and Google sites can lead to confusion for many who don't really see or care about a difference between them.

However it would be best if Chrome kept the settings to disable this. It doesn't make sense to remove those flags when they also have a large technical user base. Seems like good intentions but misjudging the impact of the decision and forcing it on everyone without recourse.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#163

Post by contem »

testvox wrote: post #141
Spearchucker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an IP can be tied to a data subject's identity it's PII. If it can't, it's not. This isn't a debate.

So the answer is yes, they are PII. But that doesn't actually answer the question of whether or not collecting them without consent is illegal under the GDPR > “Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: […] (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overri…

It depends on the purpose / if you have a legitimate need to store them.

Are you storing IP's for a certain time, so you can discover and investigate attacks?

> include preventing unauthorised access to electronic communications networks and malicious code distribution and stopping ‘denial of service’ attacks and damage to computer and electronic communication systems.

Are you storing IP's for a certain time, so you can run analytics?

> Further processing for [...] statistical purposes should be considered to be compatible lawful processing operations.

Are you doing direct marketing to your customers?

> The processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest. [Legitimate interest] There is a relevant and appropriate relationship between the data subject and the controller [...], such as where the data subject is a client or in the service of the controller.

If you are not big enough to have a law department look at this, you don't need to worry so much about a weblog.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#164

Post by kerng »

SippinLean wrote: post #161
mulmen wrote: post #132

Chrome has been the new IE for years. "just use chrome" is an endless refrain from webdevs who don't want to test on Firefox. Not sure why it is so hard for people to see what is going on here. Google has a massive conflict of interest with their web development efforts. This is classic Microsoft-esque Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Safari is the new IE, Chrome has been responsible for a huge number of positive changes in the browser landscape. I develop in Chrome because that's where the majority of our conversions come from. I (my QA team) also tests Safari, Firefox and other browsers where a significant number of conversions come from. I never heard "just use chrome" in any professional environment.

Same was true for IE, IE for instance pioneered asynchronous requests (which is pretty much the norm these days) and things like that - still was a bad browser though.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#165

Post by contem »

floatboth wrote: post #159
Spearchucker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an IP can be tied to a data subject's identity it's PII. If it can't, it's not. This isn't a debate.

But what counts as "can be tied"? Does asking the ISP that owns the address count? What about correlating with logs from other services you have access to?

If the police can tie the IP to a person, then it "can be tied". Some courts decided before GDPR that IP addresses can't convincingly be enough to tie a person to a crime committed with that IP address, but that is not to say it isn't PII, or can't be tied to a person.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#166

Post by thinkingemote »

joshuamorton wrote: post #156
pg_bot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shock and Denial is the first stage in the 7 stages of grief. The chrome team is clearly in the wrong here, and it will take some time for them to realize that they screwed up and that they need to fix it.

I also work at Google though have nothing to do with Chrome. This isn't "clear" to me. There are certainly complaints about this change within HN, but there are also people here saying that they appreciate the change, or that they're ambivalent. But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change,…

The argument that resonates with me is how Chrome is breaking the barrier between the web and the browser, and that this barrier should be important. It's morphing from a multi purpose web browser into a Google centric application (e.g. ChromeOS).

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#167

Post by allenz »

joshuamorton wrote: post #156
pg_bot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shock and Denial is the first stage in the 7 stages of grief. The chrome team is clearly in the wrong here, and it will take some time for them to realize that they screwed up and that they need to fix it.

I also work at Google though have nothing to do with Chrome. This isn't "clear" to me. There are certainly complaints about this change within HN, but there are also people here saying that they appreciate the change, or that they're ambivalent. But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change,…

What's the point of signing in at all for users who don't use sync?

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#168

Post by floatboth »

bduerst wrote: post #46
foo101 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like start searching with DuckDuckGo, use an alternate email service such as Fastmail, Protonmail, etc., and use Firefox. By the way, what's an alternate email service the HN users recommend?

DuckDuckGo doesn't really do it's own indexing, it's essentially just a reskin of Bing search.

It actually uses multiple sources for regular results, not just Bing:

> from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing

https://duck.co/help/results/sources

I remember Yandex being one of the sources as well.

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#169

Post by mankash666 »

I'm assuming here that the changes are GDPR compliant (given the large army of lawyers working for Google).

If they are, all this brouhaha is from the technophile echo chamber of opinions. The average joe gives a rat's ass for this, as evident from all the non-noise coming out of the regular world. Techonopiles have made an art of outrage - typing on their $3000 laptop or $1300 iPhones built by slave-grinded employees toiling 16 hour days in China - NO HN COMMENTING ALLOWED AT WORK FOR THEM, BTW

Please go use FF & pretend to have privacy online or be better humans. Mozilla - the world leader in disappearing money [1]. Does it really take $225M to build & maintain the quantum browser? And why $135M for 'marketing'?

Mozilla 2016 revenues: $520M

Mozila 2016 R&D: $225M

Mozilla marketing: $135M

Remaining $160M - ???

[1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Au...

Re: Am I logged in or not? GDPR case study on the example of Chrome browser change

#170

Post by pvorb »

joshuamorton wrote: post #156
pg_bot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shock and Denial is the first stage in the 7 stages of grief. The chrome team is clearly in the wrong here, and it will take some time for them to realize that they screwed up and that they need to fix it.

I also work at Google though have nothing to do with Chrome. This isn't "clear" to me. There are certainly complaints about this change within HN, but there are also people here saying that they appreciate the change, or that they're ambivalent. But the more important part of things is that HN has what, maybe 10000 active users? Chrome has over a billion. Even if every HN commenter was vehemently against this change,…

You confuse privacy with security. Also, Google is abusing its market power here, even if the change might be in favor of Chrome's users.
Post reply on HN