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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

#121

Post by janpio »

jen20 wrote: post #43
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.

> they do not have the resources to do that. Good - the aim is for them to not store personal data in the first place, much less build business models that rely upon it. Rather than allowing the population to take on the negative externality of surveillance capitalism, it is absolutely right that the burden must fall on those creating the problem. I don't see this as any different to the complain that small restauran…

The parent argument was about "to make it instant and pretty for you to look at all the data." - not GDPR in general, which I fully agree with and like very much. It is a very different thing if you give users the power to get their data, or want to force companies to present that data in a way laypersons can understand and "like".

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

#122

Post by mahastore »

mahastore wrote: post #120
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?

and APPLE?

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

#124

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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.

In general, no! But if someone proposed that all restaurants should perform chemical analyses on random samples of their food to check for spoilage and cross-contamination, I would have very similar questions about where the taco shack down the street is supposed to find an affordable chemical lab. Making it "instant and pretty for you to look at all the data" is a large, expensive endeavor and I don't see why it's necessary to achieve the regulatory goals here.

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

#125

Post by GekkePrutser »

karlicoss wrote: post #66
GekkePrutser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it does as many third party clients offer features where you can read back your own posts etc.

I'm personally using https://github.com/dogsheep/hacker-news-to-sqlite#usage , it's great. You basically just need your username and that's it

Ooh nice thanks for the tip!!

I'm making a "life log" system that stores stuff I do online automatically. This will come in very handy.

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

#126

Post by Sujan »

latexr wrote: post #117
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.

Oh, I did not know that. Thanks. A bit less "aversion" then for the future.

My last sentence was triggered by having written a comment on another comment first, which insantly went to -3 (but later kinda recovered), so I almost didn't write this one, just not to have to get the negative feeling. It's a nice Sunday after all.

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

#127

Post by GekkePrutser »

janpio wrote: post #119
GekkePrutser wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm I doubt it really. I think most webshops will just include this feature.

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

#128

Post by msrenee »

Sujan wrote: post #116
msrenee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Ah, it was only like 5 options deep and then it gave me a chat "assistant" which I used to search the term "my data" which gave me the link and the drop down box mentioned in the article to scroll to the bottom of to request my data. Which sent an email to my husband's email address that I need to open to confirm the request. Super easy. Not hidden at all.

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

#129

Post by Sujan »

lelandfe wrote: post #44
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…

> each and every point in an article just feels "fabricated" or over the top. What I thought were valid points from the article: - Unclear data: "cryptic strings of numbers like '26,444,740,832,600,000” for various search queries." This is easily the worst offender IMO. - A wait time of 19 days - Separating the download into 74 buttons

True, those are kind of valid.

The unresolved foreign keys are indeed unfortunate, I wondered about these myself when I got my takeouts in the past. I explained them to myself as something that is not actually available in the same datastore to query or join, but maybe a constant or some other system that does not include personal data. Still not nice of course.

I think the wait time and many download buttons were discussed extensively in other comments here. With cold storage as explanation for the duraiton, and just no legal need to make the takeout _convenient_, those also have a pretty good explanation I would say.

So valid, but still no scandal.

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

#130

Post by mschuster91 »

plandis wrote: post #50
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

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…

Clicking a bunch of links is pretty accessible, perhaps you’re translating accessible to convenient?

The spirit of the GDPR law was to make life for people easier. Putting hoops in front of users that are clearly not needed - Amazon could, for example, offer a single ZIP file like Twitter does - will some day earn them trouble.
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