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Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

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Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#551
post #529

I find the EU approach so much better. Your personal data (which means anything that can be used to uniquely identify you as a person) is your property, and the default is "no permission to use".

Yeah. Information should be a massive liability. The more they know, the more it should cost them. These companies should be scrambling to forget everything about us before we're even out the door, not amassing information into huge dossiers to sell to the highest bidder. The unapologetic audacity of these people never fails to impress me. GDPR has a major problem though. It allows use of data for "legitimate" purpos…

> Of course, all of these businesses think of themselves and everything they're doing as perfectly legitimate.

That wouldn't be a major issue if privacy authorities actually a) acted on complaints in a timely manner, b) issued the "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" fines that the law requires.

Most importantly, I believe some DPAs have already stated that "legitimate interest" cannot justify online advertisement. Now they "just" need to take a snapshot of the most popular 10000 websites in their country, then start issuing fines.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obsession with "big tech" as the biggest abuser of consumer privacy frustrates the hell out of me, and must be a real delight to credit bureaus, cell carriers, data brokers, fintech parasites, and all the rest of the slimy fuckers who do far worse things every day and aren't even on the public's radar.

Reporting an employee’s salary vs Zuckerberg selling your political motivations to manipulate elections are two different ballparks. It’s not that people aren’t frustrated with other abusers of customer privacy, it’s just big tech is the best at it.

Facebook doesn't sell your info. You cannot buy people political affiliations on fb.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting an employee’s salary vs Zuckerberg selling your political motivations to manipulate elections are two different ballparks. It’s not that people aren’t frustrated with other abusers of customer privacy, it’s just big tech is the best at it.

They are 2 very different ballparks in that I would much rather let FB sell my info which I provide willingly than a credit bureau sell my salary history, which I don't.

Also Facebook doesn't sell anyone's info!

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#554
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one should not forget that Denmark's society is mostly homogenous. When you have a vastly dominant, culturally homogenous group, it's relatively easy to trust and support one another. In a highly diverse country like the US, where the average New Yorker or new immigrant will have a completely different culture and world view from the average Joe in Missouri, and that's just two examples out of many, it's very…

I used to think this, but I'm not sure the evidence actually supports it. The UK has similar levels of immigration and overseas-born citizens as Scandi countries, but nowhere near their levels of social cohesion/social democracy. We were more similar < 1980, but I think the rhetoric from right wing corporate and billionaire-owned press, and now the internet, has eroded it to a large degree.

The UK is like Sweden, but Denmark (and Finland) are much more homogenous. And Sweden only retains social trust because it was still homogenous 20 years ago, most people don't realize they essentially live in Rio.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#555
post #526

Quoted post unavailable.

You can pick up your baggages and move to one those countries since they are the same or better as you say, but it must be China, Russia, Cuba or equivalent; none of west or northern Europe. That kind of comments show that you have never lived in a dictatorship.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#556
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one should not forget that Denmark's society is mostly homogenous. When you have a vastly dominant, culturally homogenous group, it's relatively easy to trust and support one another. In a highly diverse country like the US, where the average New Yorker or new immigrant will have a completely different culture and world view from the average Joe in Missouri, and that's just two examples out of many, it's very…

I used to think this, but I'm not sure the evidence actually supports it. The UK has similar levels of immigration and overseas-born citizens as Scandi countries, but nowhere near their levels of social cohesion/social democracy. We were more similar < 1980, but I think the rhetoric from right wing corporate and billionaire-owned press, and now the internet, has eroded it to a large degree.

> According to 2021 figures from Statistics Denmark, 86% of Denmark's population of over 5,840,045 was of Danish descent, defined as having at least one parent who was born in Denmark and has Danish citizenship.

> The most recent Census in 2011 highlights that in England and Wales, 80 per cent of the population were white British > from 2001 to 2011, the percentage of the population of England and Wales that was White British decreased from 87.4% to 80.5%

And I imagine that white British population has gone down in the past 10 years.

Denmark is one of the most homogeneous country in Europe.

But to support your claim, Italy is even more homogeneous than Denmark, around ~91% of the population is "Italian" and yet we can't even agree that southerners and northerners are the same people.

I think that in Denmark a small population living in highly dense cities with high homogeneity helps.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#557
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit Karma's business model isn't somehow secret, they are very much upfront about it - https://support.creditkarma.com/s/article/Is-Credit-Karma-re... They display ads for credit cards and other financial products on their site. They use your personal information to target specific financial products to you. Your credit karma ads are personalized. I just wish I got better credit card offers from them; I haven't fo…

Yeah. That much I knew. So I’m not super peeved about it. More worried about what they’ll do with the info and if they’ll broker it out more. Didn’t think they’d get this level of info though tbh. Oh - and their targeted ads are not very good… it’s kinda sad.

They don't share or resell anything. It's in the link I provided.

I'm sure their credit card partners request some protects to only be advertised to people in a certain income range, so it makes sense. They probably also use your income to populate the "your odds of approval" portion on their ads.

>their targeted ads are not very good… it’s kinda sad.

I think this is because they are advertising to the "everyman" who isn't very familiar with financial products.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#558
post #529

I find the EU approach so much better. Your personal data (which means anything that can be used to uniquely identify you as a person) is your property, and the default is "no permission to use".

That's a view through rose-colored glasses, GDPR isn't that powerful (and it only applies to user-supplied data, not all personal data). As a relevant example, in Sweden your taxable income is public information.

> As a relevant example, in Sweden your taxable income is public information.

Same in Norway. However taxable income does not equal salary. And at least in Norway, you can log in and see who requested the tax data about you, and companies can't mine this data.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hijacking here to say, literally all you need to get access to someones employment + salary history is their SSN and birthdate. edit: and a past employer that used this system Birthdays are extremely easy to get (public record), and I seem to recall a specific large organization leaking a bunch of SSN's not too long ago.......

Unless you are very young (read: born after 2011) your SSN can be trivially brute forced if an attacker knows where and when you were born, because those details were (before 2011) mapped onto 5 of the 9 digits in an SSN.

In Italy you don't even need to brute force them, you can generate them because the algorithm is public.

Except same rare case of same name, same birthday, same place of birth, the generated code is always valid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#560
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won’t eqifax tell you if someone requests the data therefore you can tell if the law is violated

I believe the point Beefy is making is that once they have your information, how can you prove that it was used in determining whether someone gets hired or how much their salary will be.

If it’s possible to sue for discrimination based on gender identity and orientation, why would it be impossible to sue for discrimination based on salary, if you have a record of prospective employer checking your salary records?
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