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I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

thatprivacyguy.com

151–160 of 308 posts

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#152
post #148

> The reply I received a few days later did me the favour of putting the violation on the record. Their position, in their own words, was that "in order to receive marketing / offers, it is a condition to be a member of the customer club." That one sentence is the whole case. They had taken a right I am entitled to exercise for free and turned it into the price of admission. I don’t understand… it would be one thing…

He was an Elkjøp/Elgiganten customer club member. He wanted to keep the club membership and discounts/offers, but stop the marketing emails. Elkjøp’s setup told him the only way to stop the marketing was to cancel the club membership altogether. To me, Elkjop seems perfectly reasonable here. But EU policy disagrees.

According to the article, that is not what Elkjøp told him. You're making the assumption that what the article says must make sense, which is unfounded.

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Becauae "spirit of the law" doesnt exist. It is a saying used by people when they want to do something that isnt in the law. You dont see lawyers, judges or law makers use the phrase.

Yes they obviously do use it?

I agree but please, provide citations instead of a question mark, to make what you believe is obvious actually in fact obvious.

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#154
post #50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sounds like it's backwards , and should be "in order to be a member of the customer club, it is a condition to receive marketing / offers ."

Yes this is the logical sentence order, at least in English.

No, the sentence order has nothing to do with it. "It is a condition to be a member of the club (in order) to receive marketing offers" and "In order to receive marketing offers, it is a condition to be a member of the club" mean the same thing. The problem is that the explicit markers of purpose ("in order to...") and requirement ("condition") appear to have been applied to the wrong things. If you rearrange them, they'll still be applied to the wrong things.

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if, as the regulator, you fail to benchmark what they gained then your laws can be ignored and your fines paid as simply a cost of doing business. Its why you find the Australian regulator for consumer affairs handing out $200m+ fines to telecommunications companies, for example.

This entire issue is sidestepped by having graduated fines (which GDPR has). If they keep doing it the amount keeps going up until eventually they go out of business. It really limits the ability to take advantage of the system which hopefully makes it not worthwhile to bother doing.

Up to 4% of turnover. So if they make more than that it is still profitable to keep going.

Not that it is likely that they make that much in profit, but still. There probably shouldn’t be a limit, and there probably should be personal legal consequences such as jail time for repeat offenders.

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#156
post #35
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that's a violation of fundamental human rights as it's your place of living. Surely that can't be legal, even in the US can it?

It doesn’t mean _inside_ the apartment. It means if they decide to film a commercial and you’re walking your dog in the background, they don’t have to ask you.

Well the document didn't say "public spaces". I also think they meant public spaces, but it wasn't in the documents.

Even then, I do not consent to work as an unpaid actor even in public spaces. I'm ok to be it at conferences, organized coworking parties -- no problem. But my living space when I don't suspect it -- hell no.

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#157
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a lot like a rationalization desperately grasping at "surely it's not as insane as it sounds, what it _must_ mean is ... " I would want to read and perhaps get legal advice before relying on that interpretation - and before finding I signed over rights to my landlord to make candid porn of me and all his other tenants.

Contracts don't and can't override laws.

In normal states not. But there you have the very popular political system called fascism, where contracts override laws.

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#158
post #78

There's also issue with EU companies forcing candidates to agree to their anti-privacy policies (confusingly named "privacy policies") as a requirement before the job interview. Those anti-privacy policies will state, that you grant the company and third-parties (so, anyone) permissions to use your data (including voice and image) for any purpose. (Of course, it is stated in a slightly obscure fashion, so a layman ma…

I haven't personally encountered that, but you are free to lodge complaint with your local DPA about it. That exact language is unlikely to be compliant. If you want to maximize your effect you could make Article 15 request to the company in question, get the list of actual recipients of data (make sure to be ask for this specifically) and then make another request to all of those companies. That will then allow you…

Our local DPA, who will then proceed to ignore it for years or tell us to take them to court ourselves. [0] As European privacy law including GDPR is a symbolic tool meant to placate and selectively enforce when politically expedient, not to seriously enforce. Understandable, given that near all EU politicians work for corporate interests, as in the US.

[0] https://noyb.eu/en/project/dpa/dpc-ireland - 80% of complaints pending a reply for more than 1.5 years

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#159
post #35
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that's a violation of fundamental human rights as it's your place of living. Surely that can't be legal, even in the US can it?

It doesn’t mean _inside_ the apartment. It means if they decide to film a commercial and you’re walking your dog in the background, they don’t have to ask you.

> It doesn’t mean

Oh man if I had a pound for every time I've had a corporate dogsbody try to invent meanings of legal wording that doesn't actually exist and gaslight me...

They are usually so passionate about it too. A simple "ah ok cool so you can add that word to the document" really annoys them.

The other classic is just "it's just standard wording". Well yeah McDonald's is also "standard" food for many people but I massively disagree with that too

Re: I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M

#160
post #115
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMisms The word is “cliches”, and they existed long before LLMs.

Haha they are cliches, yes. But a specific type of cliche that is unique to current language models. > That one sentence is the whole case This example, for instance, is more uniquely LLM than mere common cliche.

Gonna need you to expand on that, because I don't see how that sentence is “uniquely LLM” at all. It feels pretty typical for legal people speaking informally.
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