Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#21

Post by degski » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #13

hjanssen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a problem when you are targeting users from Europe, which you are doing almost certainly.

We already have more than enough cookie popups and "heads up" emails whenever a company changes a comma in their ToS. GDPR is a bureaucratic madness and not something to be imitated. Want to educate users about privacy? do it with extensive educational campaigns, not by ruining everyone's experience on the web

What really infuriates me is this: "We respect your privacy, click here".

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#22

Post by seszett » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:34 AM UTC

jmarbach wrote: post #10

Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

> There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services

Certainly not. If I didn't check a box saying "I want to receive commercial emails related to your products and services" I expect not to receive those. I might unsubscribe from the whole thing if I don't have any other means of avoiding those useless commercial emails.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#23

Post by dexen » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:34 AM UTC

jmarbach wrote: post #10

Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

>Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era.

Very much so; the pop-ups interrupt and obstruct, breaking immersion. I sincerely hope a browser gets brave enough to start blocking those obstructions by default.

It irks me how every "Cookies" banner is an unpaid advertising billboard saying, "Your privacy is valuable to us. Yours faithful, EU".

>This too shall pass.

For now, uBlock Origin[1] + the ruleset from I Don't Care About Cookies[2].

--

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

[2] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#24

Post by tom_mellior » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #16

I think the GDPR is a good opportunity to reflect how much tracking we really need. Tracking has become so ubiquitous, it's become the default to put Google Analytics on a site, to put a tracking pixel into every email, to personalize every link we send out... But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've stopped tracking website visitors and stopped including tracking pixels in emails a few years ago, an…

> So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%.

You didn't know before either since many mail programs block tracking pixels. This was always garbage data to a large extent.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#25

Post by hjanssen » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #13

hjanssen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a problem when you are targeting users from Europe, which you are doing almost certainly.

We already have more than enough cookie popups and "heads up" emails whenever a company changes a comma in their ToS. GDPR is a bureaucratic madness and not something to be imitated. Want to educate users about privacy? do it with extensive educational campaigns, not by ruining everyone's experience on the web

But the general idea of GDPR is not only to educate. It also aims to give you tools at your disposal to control how and if your data is processed and stored. That is the most remarkable feat of GDPR. To complain that this is "bureaucratic madness" is not a problem with the regulation, it is a problem with your perception of personal data. If you didn't have tools before to enable users to control _their_ personal data, you are the problem and it is definitively good that you now have to invest into making sure you create those tools.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#26

Post by Angostura » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:36 AM UTC

jmarbach wrote: post #10

Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

> It has lead to compulsory acceptance.

No. It leads to non-acceptance by default. If you are seeing forms where you are opted in to data capture by default that isn't a core part of the service, that's a breach.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#27

Post by diffeomorphism » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

jmarbach wrote: post #10

Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

> It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass.

Indeed, mandatory acceptance is not a meaningful choice and hence explicitly ruled out by the GDPR.

> There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

Sure, and all necessary use of information is just fine and unproblematic. Just the additional spying on top of that requires an additional, unforced opt-in.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#28

Post by disiplus » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

jmarbach wrote: post #10

Browsing the web in Europe is like experiencing the rebirth of the pop-up ads era. It has lead to compulsory acceptance. This too shall pass. There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

> There is a reasonable expectation that when you submit your email to a company in exchange for their service, they will email you communications relating to their products and services.

not true, i mark all those as spam, if there is a "newsletter checkbox" i check it out, but if they have hidden it somewhere i dont care, mark as spam and next.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#29

Post by degski » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

itcrowd wrote: post #11

buboard wrote: post #4

GDPR is europe's problem, not of the entire "email industry"

GDPR is Europe's (attempted) solution to a problem. It affects companies globally [1]. [1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/international_law/publica...

So what, so do American tax-lawes (targetting Americans) and affect the rest of the world's citizens, FACTA.

Re: Dear Email Industry, We’ve Got a GDPR Problem

#30

Post by Angostura » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 10:38 AM UTC

Nazzareno wrote: post #20

True that the European user should be able to opt-out just from tracking. Our platform MailUp (ESP) is handling this in the preference center (that can be customized). Here is a sample: https://updates.mailup.com/frontend/preferencecenter/363734/...

By default the European user should be opted out of tracking