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Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

privacyinternational.org

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Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#191

Post by whenchamenia »

astura wrote: post #182
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does not seem unreasonable for a service like TrueCaller to notify people that user-generated information about them is being irrevocably added to a globally public repository. If they live in Europe, as far as I'm aware, they should actually also need the users consent if the information contains anything like a name (which it most likely does) and a way for users to have their personal data erased permanently.…

This data is like Wikipedia. Does every Wikipedia entry about a person in Europe need that person's permission before it can be published? Can I make Wikipedia delete my Wikipedia page permanently with no way for anyone to ever to recreate it? What about a blog post? If a write about a friend of mine doing something on my blog, do I need my friend's written permission before I can post? I'm guessing that this answer…

Actually, articles on non-famous people require extra notibility as there are more protections for libel. Helpfully, most people with wikis are famous.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#192

Post by IX-103 »

zeveb wrote: post #175
CaptainZapp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a lot of problems that just show how incompetent politicians can get on a bad day Mind elaborating on them? The only potential issue, which I see, is some ambigiouty. However, I don't see how you could craft a legal frame work without some ambiguity, which needs to be resolved by the courts at one point. Unless your business model is dreck, I really don't see any issues with the GDPR as such.

> Mind elaborating on them? My own biggest problem with the GDPR — other than the regulatory burden, which disproportionately imposes costs on small challengers and effectively protects large pre-existing firms — is the so-called 'right to be forgotten,' which is really a privilege to force others to rewrite history. Among other things, it effectively mandates mutable logs, which is horribly insecure (logs should be…

I can agree with the motivation, but the law is not particularly well written.

If the EU passes a law and it takes armies of lawyers over two years of negotiating with the EU to find a compromise of what is and isn't included in the law (with the EU changing its stance regularly), then it probably isn't a good law.

It took a year and a half of wrangling for the EU to decide that internet advertising was not a "legitimate business interest" or "necessary to perform tasks at the request of the data subject" (despite the advertising being a primary source of funding to pay for the requested task). Then the entire internet advertising industry had just 6 months to design/implement/deploy a system that can meet the requirements and migrate all their users to the new platform (keeping in mind that their users have a financial incentive not to switch, since the old system is more profitable).

There's also the weird catch-22 of how it only applies to users with EU citizenship, but you can't collect, use, or store the information on whether or not they are an EU citizen without their permission.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#193

Post by wongarsu »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #167
vanderZwan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are living in a complex, mostly functioning nation state where the majority of conflicts is resolved in a civil manner. Not in a small tribal society where you might be murdered by someone physically stronger than you simply because he lusts after your partner. That simple fact proves how hyperbolic and naive your statement is.

Your statement is equally naive and hyperbolic. It's preposterous to think that humans haven't always had rules (well defined or not) to prevent petty BS from escalating. Of course the rules are different for a bunch of cavemen living in a group of <50 but rules and norms still existed.

I don't think that holds up to evidence. In tribes largely untouched by civilisation blood revenge is still fairly common. These are social norms, but without a neutral judge one party might execute revenge, the other party doesn't see their fault and instead retaliates, and you get an endless circle of bloodshed (which has killed entire tribes).

One of the major achievements making civilisation possible is a judge or court that can decide who is right and and who is wrong, preventing BS from spiraling in endless retaliation and counter-retatiation. In a small system that can work with just one universally respected person or person of authority, but once you scale it up to an entire country codified laws are incredibly useful for this. Codified laws means we need people making laws, which is exactly what the entire job of modern politicians is. Sure, we could have civilisation without politicians, but our countries would have to be a lot smaller than they are; a justice system without laws just doesn't scale.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#194

Post by siegecraft »

Alterlife wrote: post #39

This article focuses on the problems that truecaller poses for 'non-users". As a non-user of truecaller in India myself, I find myself in the minority. It seems I get none of the benefits (improved spam filtering, the chance to see who is calling me), and in the 'prisoners dilemma' sense, it appears I would loose nothing by installing it, because they already have my contact information. However, this is only half th…

The good news is you can turn off most of those and truecaller still works. I just checked and I only allow it access to Contacts, SMS and Phone which, given the purpose of the app, seems appropriate.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#195

Post by redux13 »

tomp wrote: post #136
Piskvorrr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money Where does the $10 come from? (Who pays it? Who collects it?) Also, you just invoked a Cobra Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

Users collect $10 from their network operator by filling a claim in an online form. Burden of proof on the network operator to prove it wasn't a spam call (e.g. originated from a known number, lasted more than some number of minutes, metadata indicates that it was a two-way conversation, etc.). Huge fines if users complain to the regulator that any of the above isn't true.

Cue the beginning of a spam robo-call (or more accurately, robo-receive) industry purely for the purpose of collecting this $10 for every call received.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#196

Post by albedoa »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #132
tomp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lack of centrally controlling authority for email That's the key difference with phones - phone numbers and call are (quasi-)centrally controlled - by your network provider. A simple legislative solution is just "user gets $10 discount on their phone bill for each spam call" and watch the problem solve itself...

(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money Where does the $10 come from? (Who pays it? Who collects it?) Also, you just invoked a Cobra Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

> Who pays it? Who collects it?

My only guess is that you misunderstand what is being proposed. The spammer is not part of the transaction.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#197

Post by amenod »

wongarsu wrote: post #193
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement is equally naive and hyperbolic. It's preposterous to think that humans haven't always had rules (well defined or not) to prevent petty BS from escalating. Of course the rules are different for a bunch of cavemen living in a group of <50 but rules and norms still existed.

I don't think that holds up to evidence. In tribes largely untouched by civilisation blood revenge is still fairly common. These are social norms, but without a neutral judge one party might execute revenge, the other party doesn't see their fault and instead retaliates, and you get an endless circle of bloodshed (which has killed entire tribes). One of the major achievements making civilisation possible is a judge o…

> One of the major achievements making civilisation possible is a judge or court that can decide who is right and and who is wrong, preventing BS from spiraling in endless retaliation and counter-retatiation.

Well, no? Isn't that what is called "war"? You might argue that frequency of conflicts is lower, though I would be sceptical of that without further proof.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#198

Post by shaftway »

RikNieu wrote: post #57
shaftway wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're suggesting that it's a user's responsibility to proactively register their number with every single third party caller ID service that exists and ever will exist? And you consider that a "simple solution"? It does not seem unreasonable for a service like TrueCaller to notify people that user-generated information about them is being irrevocably added to a globally public repository.

All I'm suggesting is that if a particular user is concerned about their safety, I would suggest they take steps to insure it. But if one wants to push for regulation to prevent the emergence of apps like TrueCaller, then perhaps we can start regulating robo-calls and sales calls more effectively? Then no one would need to install apps like TrueCaller in the first place.

And I'm suggesting that your proposed solution isn't reasonable, or even discoverable for the majority of people. Clearly this person was concerned about their safety. And clearly they took steps to insure it.

Arguing that the real problem is robo-calls is besides the point. It's like saying if people just drove safer we wouldn't have to have seatbelts. Or if I had bajillions of dollars we wouldn't have to have this discussion, because I'd be off on a beach somewhere. It's marginally related at best.

But if that's the line you really want to take, TrueCaller could have a "That was spam" button, and if enough people click it then it could block the calls. The faux caller ID part doesn't need to be part of the service.

Google Voice offers a somewhat similar service, but it flips the onus around. When enabled the caller has to identify themselves before the call can get through, and then the recipient can screen based on that. This approach is wildly more discoverable for the caller (who the information is attached to), and similarly filters out robo-calls.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#199

Post by lmkg »

zeveb wrote: post #175
CaptainZapp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a lot of problems that just show how incompetent politicians can get on a bad day Mind elaborating on them? The only potential issue, which I see, is some ambigiouty. However, I don't see how you could craft a legal frame work without some ambiguity, which needs to be resolved by the courts at one point. Unless your business model is dreck, I really don't see any issues with the GDPR as such.

> Mind elaborating on them? My own biggest problem with the GDPR — other than the regulatory burden, which disproportionately imposes costs on small challengers and effectively protects large pre-existing firms — is the so-called 'right to be forgotten,' which is really a privilege to force others to rewrite history. Among other things, it effectively mandates mutable logs, which is horribly insecure (logs should be…

> Among other things, it effectively mandates mutable logs

It does not. The Right to Erasure is much more restricted than many people seem to realize. If you can articulate an Overriding Legitimate Interest, and find a way to balance that against privacy, then GDPR gives you a pass.

While I don't believe it's been tested in court, the general belief is that the Right to Erasure does not mandate deletion from back-ups. It's generally believed that an acceptable practice is to keep a ledger of "forgotten" accounts off to the side (or their hashes or something), and make sure that your restore-from-backup process deletes those from prod after restore. I know that logs aren't back-ups, but the same idea should apply.

The issue with compelled censorship may have merit, but I haven't seen a concrete example where I agree that happens. Like I said, the Right to Erasure is more restricted than many realize. But, Europe also ranks the importance of speech rights slightly lower than we do in the States, so it's possible that certain Overriding Legitimate Interest arguments wouldn't fly.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#200

Post by Kuraj »

Alterlife wrote: post #39

This article focuses on the problems that truecaller poses for 'non-users". As a non-user of truecaller in India myself, I find myself in the minority. It seems I get none of the benefits (improved spam filtering, the chance to see who is calling me), and in the 'prisoners dilemma' sense, it appears I would loose nothing by installing it, because they already have my contact information. However, this is only half th…

Honestly I would happily give them some of my personal information in exchange for their service. The problem is that information in my address book, SMS, call log etc. is not just mine.
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