Great news! They have been preying on a very vulnerable community.
Are gay men in Norway a very vulnerable community? My impression was no, but I’m willing to have that countered
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Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
161–170 of 297 posts
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#162> Grindr is now relying on a new consent system and alleged "legitimate interest" to use data without user consent. This is in conflict with the decision of the Norwegian DPA, as it explicitly held that "any extensive disclosure ... for marketing purposes should be based on the data subject’s consent". This "legitimate interest" shenanigans is coming up more and more often, where you have a modal with lots of options…
The various dark patterns employed by these consent systems are fairly opaque to anyone who bothers to open them, and are clearly deliberate attempts at maintaining the old status quo of "opt-in by default". Frankly, I am surprised at how few of these fines are flying around, though I am quite happy to hear they _are_ happening. I do get that this type of regulation is very disruptive to many companies, but if they c…
I'm baffled by the number of companies that should not have any need for third-party cookies and still go full-on dark pattern. In particular online shops: I'm already on their site, why would they loudly advertise "we're shady and want to trick you into selecting all cookies"? I've cancelled more than one purchase because I didn't want to bother with this.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#163> Grindr is now relying on a new consent system and alleged "legitimate interest" to use data without user consent. This is in conflict with the decision of the Norwegian DPA, as it explicitly held that "any extensive disclosure ... for marketing purposes should be based on the data subject’s consent". This "legitimate interest" shenanigans is coming up more and more often, where you have a modal with lots of options…
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.
Clearly a violation too, since the experience is now worse when not giving consent. That its clearly deliberate doesn't help either.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#164Earlier 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.
Still not acceptable to make a worse experience when the consent is rejected.
They'd need to queue those things and process them async later, or find a solution that doesn't need those requests at all.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#165NYOB seems to be a great company. I have heard of their lawsuits against Apple, Facebook and now a large fine against Grindr. If anyone wants to help them - https://noyb.eu/en/support-us . (no affiliation)
Thanks for that, I figured advocating for my privacy is worth at least 50 EUR/yr, so I subscribed.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#166> Grindr is now relying on a new consent system and alleged "legitimate interest" to use data without user consent. This is in conflict with the decision of the Norwegian DPA, as it explicitly held that "any extensive disclosure ... for marketing purposes should be based on the data subject’s consent". This "legitimate interest" shenanigans is coming up more and more often, where you have a modal with lots of options…
I have met few websites where you cannot uncheck the "legitimate interest" fields.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#167Note that this is 10% of revenue so it is quite substantial.
And 30% of profit, looks like:
> Authority imposes a fine of 100 Mio NOK (€ 9.63 Mio or $ 11.69 Mio) on Grindr. An enormous fine, as Grindr only reported a profit of $ 31 Mio in 2019 - a third of which is now gone.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Of course they have to track that they aren’t tracking you, or else you would get the consent banner repeatedly on every page load.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#169Earlier 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.
So (in this hypothetical), it's sharing your data with ad networks, in order to not share your data with ad networks?
That seems really wrong.
Re: Grindr to be fined almost €10M over GDPR complaint
#170The GDPR has always amazed me. It changed the playing field from "you can use our free app as long as you give us data for marketing or not use it" to "you can provide a free service in the EU as long as you dont collect data for marketing or dont provide it" Without making a judgement on the merits of the approach, as a user/individual I appreciate the power this gives to protect my data. As a company/developer the…
> As a company/developer the conplexity of navigating the landmines that this poses makes me understand why a lot non EU companies decide to just block EU users.
The only places I've seen actually do this are local newspapers in the US. Are there many other substantial companies doing this?
In general, dropping the EU is an expensive game: it's 450 million people, including many rich developed countries. GDPR doesn't mean you can't advertise or do other freemium upselling, it just means you can't precisely track people's personal data to do so, and the rules for that are fairly common sense & clear imo. It's not difficult for most businesses to make good money and stay inside the rules.