Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint • Hacker News Board

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#141

Post by Hitton » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #118

Hitton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't share your paternalistic view of having to police people's actions. Giving informed consent to use some data (and eventually ability to withdraw that consent when the business between the parties ends) should be enough. And your comparison between sharing users' personal data, something that influences only them and voting rights (which are not transferable btw) that influence everyone is absolutely ludicrous…

Privacy absolutely affects everyone. If you gave consent to Facebook to track you & you are my friend, you'll give my phone number to Facebook, and photos of me, etc. I cannot opt out of that! And in fact FB is well known for building shadow profiles [+] Look, I understand if you feel "privacy rights" and "voting rights" are not in the same class of rights, I even mentioned explicitly that even though the same princi…

I don't know why you are bringing Facebook into this. Its business model is completely different, afaik it doesn't offer paid subscription to opt out of all tracking. This is known as straw man fallacy - misrepresenting someone's position and then rebut that.

What you are suggesting is not like "women should be allowed to vote" it's akin to "women must vote".

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#142

Post by sleepyhead » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #129

So presumably the Norwegian government will be fined for publishing everyone's tax returns then :-)

No because GDPR has exceptions for state usage. Tax returns are not published but some key figures are available but you need to authenticate to retrieve it and it is logged and the log is available to the searched person.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#143

Post by jhanschoo » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

orangepanda wrote: post #18

> Consent must be unambiguous, informed, specific and freely given. A bit ironic, for a dating app.

If I'm not wrong, dating apps are among the worst for user privacy. Google `dating apps user privacy` and you'll find no shortage of news articles.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#144

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

Laarlf wrote: post #124

gspr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gdpr didn’t change much but made small companies like these more vulnerable and web browsing more unbearable. Data is still getting collected and big companies don’t care. You do know that GDPR fines scale with revenue ?

Do you see Google, Microsoft and Apple? It’s nearly been 3 years and they don’t really seem to care. Pretty sure the EU is too scared to touch them.

Two years ago Google was fined 50 million euros by the French regulator. Last year it was 7 million by the Swedish. More will come.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#145

Post by elliekelly » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

privacylawthrow wrote: post #131

dthul wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some websites I get a tracking / cookie consent popup which, if I choose not to consent to everything, leaves me hanging for a _very_ long time while "saving my settings". I am talking about 30-60 seconds here. That must be deliberate to keep you from denying consent. I forgot which company it was but I immediately recognize those popups.

Some tools call APIs from a whole bunch of ad networks. That 60 seconds is likely spent getting opt out cookies from dozens of different ad network domains.

Why is the “opt out cookie” necessary? Why can’t they just assume that anyone who doesn’t have an opt in cookie hasn’t opted in and can’t be tracked? Isn’t the opt out cookie itself a form of tracking? If you have the cookie I know you’ve been to a site I advertise on/track/am affiliated with.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#146

Post by virgilp » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

Hitton wrote: post #141

virgilp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy absolutely affects everyone. If you gave consent to Facebook to track you & you are my friend, you'll give my phone number to Facebook, and photos of me, etc. I cannot opt out of that! And in fact FB is well known for building shadow profiles [+] Look, I understand if you feel "privacy rights" and "voting rights" are not in the same class of rights, I even mentioned explicitly that even though the same princi…

I don't know why you are bringing Facebook into this. Its business model is completely different, afaik it doesn't offer paid subscription to opt out of all tracking. This is known as straw man fallacy - misrepresenting someone's position and then rebut that. What you are suggesting is not like "women should be allowed to vote" it's akin to "women must vote".

What does the business model have to do with everything? I was merely replying to this:

> sharing users' personal data, something that influences only them

It does not influence only them, and I gave you an example. Also, I don't care what's FB's business model, I advocate that nobody should have an automatic right to build user profiles. I explicitly advocate that you should not have the right to demand payment in "data" because privacy should not be considered currency. Is that a strawman? I thought that was your entire argument "people should be free to decide to pay with their data!". NO THEY SHOULD NOT. Data is not currency, just like votes are not currency. You ask for currency, if you need payment - you don't ask for profile data.

> it's akin to "women must vote".

Well, it's an analogy, if you don't find it useful, let's drop it. The gist of it is, I feel very strongly that we should legislate that privacy is not currency, you seem to feel otherwise. It is fine to disagree, but it doesn't make my position irrational or absurd in any way. Yes, I feel that allowing people to pay with privacy _is_ exactly "taking their rights away", in the same way that allowing them to pay with their voting rights would be.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#147

Post by foepys » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

Laarlf wrote: post #124

gspr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gdpr didn’t change much but made small companies like these more vulnerable and web browsing more unbearable. Data is still getting collected and big companies don’t care. You do know that GDPR fines scale with revenue ?

Do you see Google, Microsoft and Apple? It’s nearly been 3 years and they don’t really seem to care. Pretty sure the EU is too scared to touch them.

WhatsApp's privacy update differed quite a lot between the EU and the US. That alone shows that the big tech corps are careful.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#148

Post by jononor » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #72

They are sending all of their user's data with an "opt out" flag and leaving it to the ad companies to honor it? Slow clap? It also caught my eye that their TOS didn't allow users a choice in data sharing, it was either agree or don't use the app. That might have some wide ramifications, I've encountered many web sites that won't let you past the sharing opt-in until you click agree - i.e. it is impossible to disagre…

If they try that, I guess the Norwegian authorities will escalate through EU - either on the EU level, or by collaboration with larger national agencies such as in Germany. This is not a case isolated to Norway, and the agency seems to see it as such.

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#149

Post by hlasdjlfhalwjk » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

privacylawthrow wrote: post #131

dthul wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some websites I get a tracking / cookie consent popup which, if I choose not to consent to everything, leaves me hanging for a _very_ long time while "saving my settings". I am talking about 30-60 seconds here. That must be deliberate to keep you from denying consent. I forgot which company it was but I immediately recognize those popups.

Some tools call APIs from a whole bunch of ad networks. That 60 seconds is likely spent getting opt out cookies from dozens of different ad network domains.

Doesn't GDPR require opt-in for tracking?

So as long as you didn't interact with the banner, _every_ page load should take ~60s?

Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint

#150

Post by Hitton » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

aenario wrote: post #139

Hitton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't share your paternalistic view of having to police people's actions. Giving informed consent to use some data (and eventually ability to withdraw that consent when the business between the parties ends) should be enough. And your comparison between sharing users' personal data, something that influences only them and voting rights (which are not transferable btw) that influence everyone is absolutely ludicrous…

I'd like to sell you some cough medication, it's all natural, made from a concentrate of two south-american plant called "coca" and "tabaco", everyone who tries keep asking for more, even when we increased the price ! Too bad the big bad governement regulation prevent me from selling it. It's absolutely ridiculous, all my customers wants it and I pay my taxes.

I'm not a hard core libertarian to argue about whether banning drugs is good, but even in your scenario customers having information about what is the "medication" made of and any addictive properties those things might have would go a long way. And lets not pretend that whether a drug is legal (alcohol, tobacco, even marijuana somewhere) or not is result of rational process and not just result of lobbying and historical custom.