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An unwanted update to your Google Account

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Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#181

Post by monkeyshelli »

croes wrote: post #91
stavros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the GDPR doesn't apply to citizens, but to companies. It only applies to companies that target the EU for their services: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

That's clever by google. Because if a german citizen uses european google services, he is GDPR protected no matter where he is. That switch made im a EU citizens living abroad using non-EU services, so no GDPR protection. Coincidence?

Is there any reason why e.g. you go for a holiday outside of EU your account is moved to that country (no more GDPR protection) and all of your data can(?) then be processed. When you come back within the EU GDPR-flag is set back to true.

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#182

Post by _nalply »

cldellow wrote: post #70
_nalply wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you have this strange number from? The factorization is 3 * 61.

As others have said, it's half of a year. But most importantly, it's the number that the US government uses on form 8840, the Closer Connection Exception Statement for Aliens: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8840.pdf

This answer is why I asked my somewhat stupid question. You know 183 days is weirdly specific. Why not just say 6 months or half a year?

And know I know why, it's because US goverments uses this number as a cut-off for some legal consequences. Thank you!

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#183

Post by CogitoCogito »

cptskippy wrote: post #177
croes wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal has already lost in german court. And global sanctions are still invalid. Paypal explicitly violates applicable EU law, namely the EU Blocking Regulation. This EU directive was explicitly issued in response to the US embargo against Cuba. It prohibits European companies from complying with the embargo and threatens all those who engage in the US blockade with severe penalties. And PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Ci…

Are the penalties worse than what they would face from US authorities? How do you balance that?

That should be up to Paypal EU. The EU should revoke their operating licenses until they come into compliance with EU law.

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#184

Post by Symbiote »

Havoc wrote: post #152
Guidii wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thread mentioned: https://policies.google.com/terms?authuser= This gave me the TOS matched to the country that Google thinks I'm in. (They're correct, in my case)

That has me under US despite being in the UK. So that seems to be the legal territory you fall under rather than necessarily IP detected country

In a private tab, this page starts with "Country version: Denmark" with a footnote explaining I should sign in to see the terms that apply to my account.

If I sign in, the "Country version" line is gone, though I'm still (correctly) shown the EU terms.

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#185

Post by tomxor »

tomxor wrote: post #21

Lets be honest.. it's not "your account" it's "their account". It's not just Google, this is the modern web. If you use a web based service I think it's better to assume everything you give them is theirs, otherwise it's an impossible battle of constantly reviewing massive ToS changes and a mutating product/features. I guess this view probably sounds a little out of touch but it's easier if you don't use a smart phon…

My confidence in HN is restored :)

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#187

Post by AshamedCaptain »

marcosdumay wrote: post #120
Semaphor wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be appropriate? Firefox has it under "Choose your preferred language for displaying pages" which seems appropriate to me.

More importantly, Firefox defaults to the language of the browser you choose to install. I haven't seen anybody install software on the wrong language by mistake for a long time.

"Pre-installed software" is a thing.

Not saying that I think it's OK to just ignore what is the STANDARD WAY of specifying my desired language, just saying this type of crap is what they're going to argue when trying to justify it.

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#188

Post by jmholla »

compiler-guy wrote: post #133
jmholla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were also enough signs for them to identify Dan Schroeder being from Thailand despite the fact he hasn't been there or out of his country of residence for two years.

The argument isn't that the system is perfect. It likely just needs to be good enough. A false positive in attempting to comply with the law really isn't a reason to not try at all.

Then there needs to be an actually working avenue to correct these issues. the rsponse, the system isn't perfect so, sorry, tough luck, is a worse argument in my opinion. In this case Schroeder's valid appeal was denied, which was my point.

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#189

Post by remus »

soraminazuki wrote: post #179
remus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Google has to satisfy the legal requirements of the country the user is actually in.

You're missing the point. To reiterate the whole point of the article, Google is ignoring the actual residency of their users. European citizens who have merely traveled are forcibly having their accounts moved to another country with lax privacy laws. Also, in accordance with everything else they do, there's no meaningful way for users to reverse this decision. The quote from the article makes this even more clear:…

I was responding to the parent comment (which from my reading asked why users can't tell google which country they want their account to be associated with) not the article.

Re: An unwanted update to your Google Account

#190

Post by ketamine__ »

jsnell wrote: post #29
ketamine__ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone rents an Airbnb for a few months in a new location are they now a resident of that new location? If we aren't talking about residency then changing an association (whatever that means) seems arbitrary.

Why do you think this is a matter of a few months? All we know is that the author hasn't traveled "recently". But yes, those kinds of thresholds are common when it comes to residency as an official concept for e.g. taxation. Usually the threshold is around 183 days, but there is no reason why it'd be obviously less arbitrary than other choices.

Why do you think I'm talking about the author and not in general?
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