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Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

theintercept.com

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Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#101
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you'd be wrong. There are humans involved at every level of GDPR requests. Signed, Someone who has handled such requests for AWS

That feels like an untenable solution, it wouldn't take much to create a denial of service...

Very little about GDPR was designed with technical reality in mind. It's a grand example of using the mallet of law to try and beat the world into the shape someone wants it in, ignorant of why it's in the shape it's currently in.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#102
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're giving the argument too much credit. It's more akin to a large restaurant arguing that small restaurants could be put out of business by health inspections, so maybe we should hold off on the idea. Rather, keeping a clean kitchen is something they all should be doing anyway from the get go. Any pain for Amazon in Amazon's process is entirely Amazon's fault. If systems are built with the requirement of letting…

> If systems are built with the requirement of letting users export their data, then the additional effort to do so is trivial. It’s unreasonable, IMO, to think that companies should have had the foresight to see legislation that would happen two decades after the company had already existed and as a result build a system for retrieving user data that has no profit generating potential. GDPR is good because prior to…

1. Privacy legislation existed in European countries for years (and often for decades)

2. GDPR was in the works for several years, and when it went in effect, companies were given 2 years to become compliant

3. GDPR went into effect 5 years ago, and has been enforced for 3 years

So please stop with the "poor companies could not foresee this, and didn't have the time to implement this"

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#103
post #21

It's not very often that each and every point in an article just feels "fabricated" or over the top. It starts with finding the page: Amazon -> Customer Service -> Search for "personal data" -> Search result #1 is "Request Your Personal Information" which nicely explains what to do and links directly to that page. The need to verify or activate a data request via clicking a link? Of course required so some third part…

That search you suggested doesn't appear to exist in the app. You mind telling me how to access this data through the app if it's so easy?

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#104

I run a part of the data request process at our company. This article is an example where people expect anything technology related to be magic. We have to go through EVERY tech stack we own and look for that person's data. It's amazingly manual and tedious and takes about 6 people about an hour per request. We're working to automate it, but needless to say we try not to broadcast it too broadly. I hate that everyone…

> We have to go through EVERY tech stack we own and look for that person's data. It's amazingly manual and tedious and takes about 6 people about an hour per request.

GDPR went into effect 5 years ago. If 5 years later you still haven't automated this...

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#105
post #60
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "willing" in this context, though. You, myself and most people on HN have a really good idea of what data we willingly give Amazon, while the average person does not. Is it really an accurate statement that people willingly give them their data when they don't actually know what they're giving?

What data does Amazon have that you haven't given them?

Well shoot, I've never thought of it that way. I guess it's perfectly reasonable that they've extrapolated my behavior out so they know when to raise the price of items I intend to purchase. Yep, not underhanded at all.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That last part is pretty dumb! It's not just dumb, the whole process is at the edges of the law. Art. 12 GDPR mandates "intelligible and easily accessible form", which navigating through a number of pages, wait times and finally a 74-link download is certainly not fulfilling. The gold standard, for what it's worth, is a direct link from the privacy policy page in the section that details GDPR subject rights to the…

This is yet another example of how the GDPR is bad law. "Intelligible and easily accessible" is way too vague. Are 74 zip files intelligible and easily accessible? Of course not! I don't want to pull 74 links! Is 1 zip file intelligible and easily accessible? Of course not! Way too big to pull in over my low-bandwidth connection. Are zip files intelligible and easily accessible? Of course not! Not everyone understand…

This is yet another example of a random commenter on HN parroting "GPDR bad" nonsense while being intentionally obtuse.

Laws are often written with "common sense" in mind. HN commentators prefer to eschew common sense to try and excuse bad actors, bad behaviour, bad UX, bad anything.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#108
post #21

It's not very often that each and every point in an article just feels "fabricated" or over the top. It starts with finding the page: Amazon -> Customer Service -> Search for "personal data" -> Search result #1 is "Request Your Personal Information" which nicely explains what to do and links directly to that page. The need to verify or activate a data request via clicking a link? Of course required so some third part…

>The need to verify or activate a data request via clicking a link? Of course required so some third party can not just request your data to your inbox (and process it along the way) without you actually wanting to do that.

You mean like some data hoarding company that offers free email that scans all of your messages to provide better "sorting", provide quickly accessible Tracking buttons, or similar features? Would something like that be considered doing evil?

>(And bye to some Hacker News points. This will get nicely downvoted I suspect.)

meh. The loss of 4 points is nothing when making valid points

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#109

I tried one time, they wrote me they where going to send me my data, but never did (!) I gave up I'll try again now :)

"more than a month" :)

> Data Request Confirmation

> We’ve received and are processing your request to access your personal data.

> We will provide your information to you as soon as we can.

> Usually, this should not take more than a month.

>In exceptional cases, for example if a request is more complex or if we are processing a high volume of requests, it might take longer, but if so we will notify you that there will be a delay.

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