This kind of crap is why I am moving all of my tech stack to the US
Smart. Europe is a circius.
Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
21–30 of 195 posts
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#22> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline. This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-( What I am not understanding is the case of why , why would dutch government or website do this, is…
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general. Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and…
> People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.
Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
I mean, perhaps Google analytics might make sense anywhere else except this but perhaps you are right that there might be many dev's who don't know anything except G.A.
But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
https://alternativeto.net/software/google-analytics/?license...
https://openalternative.co/alternatives/google-analytics
There are many alternatives present which value gdpr and can be self hosted easily.
I am unsure of what should be done if its case of ignorance rather than malice, malice can be fixed but ignorance is a greater systemetic issues and there are websites which help in fixing the gap of knowledge (like the ones I linked, esp alternativeto has genuinely helped me personally in many things) but the issue is that people might not even know or perhaps even bother with these websites too.
So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
See my comment. My hypothesis is: ignorance and apathy that results in incompetence. Using GA4 is just the normal thing right? Look in a room full of marketing experts and they will say yes or shrug. Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances…
Yes, my comment was published just one minute after yours so I only saw your comment after mine and I appreciated reading your comment (& upvoted it) > Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or ra…
Marketing people like the features they're getting, and Google and Meta are dominant, so big that they're the default, in the same way that we talk about github being the default option, and "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM / (big tech company of your choosing)". I wouldn't dream of saying they should choose something else, without researching and guaranteeing that nothing they'd ever want from GA (and they may not know everything they'll want in the future right now) is missing in the alternative. In a role (marketing) that's completely out of my wheelhouse. So I don't even bother.
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#24> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline. This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-( What I am not understanding is the case of why , why would dutch government or website do this, is…
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general. Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and…
Not just instinct, I'd need to be able to justify the choice against any potential downside of not choosing the default option.
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#25Yea this is bad. I do want to mention though, while this is bad, I feel like we're singling out a site. Fact is, I've seen more places where this doesn't happen. Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one. And while I've done my best to work at those places to get it fixed, there is a lot of inertia and simply ignorance. I'm not talking about small places either. I'm talking about non-te…
I have a similar outlook atm as one of "those guys."
Everything takes so long, nobody is held accountable. The most likely result of pushing for any type of positive outcome for basically anything is some form of punishment or social degradation.
And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.
I will also note that most of the things I see "being corrected" these days are entirely fictitious.
As an example is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. They tossed out a valid complaint about Shaw (during Rogers buyout) for jurisdictional reasons. Then they are on the news making odd statements about (exclusively) OpenAI not being honest about using your data?
It's all a show it seems. I figured it needs to get a qhole lot worse before it can get any better.
I have moved to internal tooling creation and have airgapped a machine/tool each month this year so far. Just a laptop and my social phone remain networked.
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#26> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline. This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-( What I am not understanding is the case of why , why would dutch government or website do this, is…
> Stichting 113 has temporarily disabled all measurement and analysis tools. It seems that it is only temporary. > “We realize that visitors must be able to trust that their privacy is protected and regret that concerns have arisen regarding this.” They also regret that "concerns have arisen". No other regrets have been mentioned.
Right? "We don't regret that we did this, just that people are mad about it"
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#27I thought Europe was more careful about things like this. This is pretty bad, these people are vulnerable and they're just mining they're data for profit.
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general. Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and…
> People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions. Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention websit…
> Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
It's just a random example what marketers and owners think about when choosing an analytics platform, not specific to a suicide prevention website. But also, think that the website owner has some "Goal" which in this context might be "Someone calls and didn't kill themselves", then they'd try to setup their analytics platform to give them concrete numbers and metrics about this "sales funnel".
> But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
Me too, and I don't disagree with anything what you write.
But practically, among less-technical users, imagine your typical Windows dev who've written C# code for two decades and gets excited when Microsoft holds press-conferences, these people aren't seriously gonna re-evaluate their choices, they go with what they already know in 99% of the cases.
> So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
Best you can do is be honest, forthcoming and help them understand if it feels like they don't understand. Ultimately, people won't try to solve things they don't see as issues, so the first step to take might be to clearly identify and show them what issues the current approach as, with concrete evidence and context.
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#29Who are the founders, their funders and their motivation?
Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
#30Sheesh, reality is more cynical than any bleak humorist could ever write.
Why am I all of a sudden getting ads for rope and large amounts of Tylenol??