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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

#111

Post by passivate »

Sujan wrote: post #25
jen20 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there is no reason for them to do that. If that is not their business goal, perhaps the GDPR needs to be strengthened and strongly enforced until it is.

That is certainly a political decision that can be made, I agree and would actually be happy about that. If that happens, I am sure Amazon will invest the time and money to comply with that. At the same time it will put many smaller business out of business though, as they do not have the resources to do that. Even the current state of having to fulfill data requests is quite a problem for mayn of them.

Small business have fewer customers. I imagine their workload will scale down to manageable levels. If not there will be market demand to create automation for whatever out of the box system they're using to maintain data.

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

#112

Post by TeeMassive »

yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

You're doing privacy a great service, you're charity is awesome!

Are your services also work outside of the US, like, say, Canada?

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

#113

Post by alias_neo »

legitster wrote: post #37

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…

> I hate that everyone jumps on any bad experience as a "dark pattern" when there's plenty of incompetence to share the blame.

While I understand you; this is Amazon. It's laughable to think, for an organisation with the technology and resources of Amazon, that this is anything but laziness, "malicious compliance" or a deliberate "fuck you".

Having me forced to click over a hundred download buttons to get the data I requested is not ok for a company Amazon's size and is not because they couldn't spare the resources to have someone write a few lines of code to archive those into a single tar.gz/zip and provide one button to click, it's deliberate.

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

#114

Post by yoaviram »

TeeMassive wrote: post #112
yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

You're doing privacy a great service, you're charity is awesome! Are your services also work outside of the US, like, say, Canada?

Thank you! We are about to launch support for the Brazilian LGPD, and have 17 other regulations we want to support this year, including Canada.

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

#115

Post by ramphastidae »

yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

I have been asking a broker to remove my data for weeks and they are giving me the runaround. However, I’m not in CA (another US state). Anything I can do?

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

#116

Post by Sujan »

msrenee wrote: post #103
Sujan wrote: 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?

For me (amazon.de, EN language setting): Open app -> "More" burger menu botton right (three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other) -> Scroll down to "Customer service" -> Scroll down to search feature -> "Personal Information" -> #1. I think this is really just a webview to the same part of the website with a different design.

Takes a bit more tapping and scrolling than clicking on desktop, but that is more he fault of the smaller screen and how apps work I would guess.

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

#117

Post by latexr »

Sujan wrote: 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…

> And bye to some Hacker News points.

The lowest score you can get on a comment is -4 (https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#downvo...).

> This will get nicely downvoted I suspect.

Complaining about downvotes before they happen is more likely to get you downvotes than anything else you wrote in that post.

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

#118

Post by Sujan »

Nextgrid wrote: post #61
Sujan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly a political decision that can be made, I agree and would actually be happy about that. If that happens, I am sure Amazon will invest the time and money to comply with that. At the same time it will put many smaller business out of business though, as they do not have the resources to do that. Even the current state of having to fulfill data requests is quite a problem for mayn of them.

I am getting quite tired of the "small businesses" argument about the GDPR. It's starting to become the "think of the children" equivalent but for data protection. Would you also be against food safety or physical product regulations (ban of leaded solder or other toxic chemicals)? After all, those can and do affect small restaurants and other businesses as well.

I don't think comparing food safetey or toxic chemicals that hurt your health to the design, usability and accessibility of a data export is very valid. The parent argument was not about not having to export data at all. It was about how well designed it was.

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

#119

Post by janpio »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #53
Sujan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly a political decision that can be made, I agree and would actually be happy about that. If that happens, I am sure Amazon will invest the time and money to comply with that. At the same time it will put many smaller business out of business though, as they do not have the resources to do that. Even the current state of having to fulfill data requests is quite a problem for mayn of them.

Those smaller businesses will just use a standard webshop package that will incorporate this feature because most of their customers will want it.. The same way these companies use stuff like Magento or PrestaShop instead of rolling their own.

Exactly. But that will something additional they will have to buy (and install, and maintain) if GDPR would include to "make it instant and pretty for you to look at all the data.". Because that is what the parent discussion was about.

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

#120

Post by mahastore »

yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

What is the process of getting all my data collected by GOOGLE and MICROSOFT?
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