Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 395 posts

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#11

Post by lbarrow »

mziel wrote: post #4

Looking forward to May (when GDPR officially comes into force). Provided that it doesn't end up like the cookie law (and there are explicit provisions in GDPR and ePrivacy to avoid that) this might shake up the ad industry: * Explicit consent for non-essential data use, you always need to provide opt-out without degrading the service * Opt-in/out separately for every activity (no more "research purposes") * Data dele…

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "doesn't end up like the cookie law"? I'm an American and don't have much awareness of this other than I've noticed that sites in the EU like the Guardian tend to have annoying banners saying they use cookies at the bottom of their splash screens.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#12

Post by koolba »

dpwm wrote: post #9
John_KZ wrote: post #6

In order to make these decisions enforceable we need to collaborate with ISPs to anonymize traffic. Government action is necessary. I've contemplated far too long on this problem and there's no other solution. You can make them say that don't store your data, but that's pretty much always a lie. We can build browsers that reject cookies, but you can't get rid of your IP. All these services can simply track you throug…

There are many situations, think university or corporate networks, where you cannot rely on the IP address for tracking. There are ISPs that don't have enough IP addresses for users so they many-to-one NAT them and most users won't even notice. Even behind an ISP or corporate NAT with cookies disabled, there are other ways of tracking. If JavaScript is enabled, browser fingerprinting can be very disturbing in its abi…

Less so on a corporate network ad the vast majority of the machines are running the exact same build, plugin sets, and usually hardware too.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#13

Post by derefr »

fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors, too."

Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corporations you haven't yet taken the business strategy away from, so they heavily resist that.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#14

Post by John_KZ »

shaki-dora wrote: post #10
John_KZ wrote: post #6

In order to make these decisions enforceable we need to collaborate with ISPs to anonymize traffic. Government action is necessary. I've contemplated far too long on this problem and there's no other solution. You can make them say that don't store your data, but that's pretty much always a lie. We can build browsers that reject cookies, but you can't get rid of your IP. All these services can simply track you throug…

What do mean? Isn’t this verdict a pretty good example of how the law actually is enforceable? For Facebook to lie in such a lawsuit would require hundreds of their employees being willing to lie under oath. It just doesn’t make sense, considering they would risk harsh criminal sanctions and have only their usual salary as an upside. As for IP-based tracking: if it were as effective as cookies, websites would use IPs…

>For Facebook to lie in such a lawsuit would require hundreds of their employees being willing to lie under oath.

Actually it would only require a handful of people hiding the truth. Given how most of facebook's development is done in the US and not in Belgium, they won't even have to appear in court.

Also IP-based tracking is very effective, and it's used alongside cookies. Nothing beats cookies with Javascript, but IP will do just fine, especially for companies like Facebook and Google who can track you on pretty much every click you take.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#15

Post by mannykannot »

rhizome wrote: post #5
fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

It doesn't matter, since it doesn't even make it legal.

As the unethical nature of the practice is an important argument for it being illegal, it is important that this self-serving nonsense is challenged wherever it shows up, and especially where it is not illegal.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#16

Post by mziel »

lbarrow wrote: post #11
mziel wrote: post #4

Looking forward to May (when GDPR officially comes into force). Provided that it doesn't end up like the cookie law (and there are explicit provisions in GDPR and ePrivacy to avoid that) this might shake up the ad industry: * Explicit consent for non-essential data use, you always need to provide opt-out without degrading the service * Opt-in/out separately for every activity (no more "research purposes") * Data dele…

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "doesn't end up like the cookie law"? I'm an American and don't have much awareness of this other than I've noticed that sites in the EU like the Guardian tend to have annoying banners saying they use cookies at the bottom of their splash screens.

You can read more about the cookie law here: https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/

Basically EU wanted sites to obtain consent to use users' cookies (and for the users to give/take away that consent). However, pretty much all the sites just decided to provide you with a banner saying something like "if you're using this site you agree to our cookie policy". Therefore the law became ineffective and just a nuisance to the users.

This notion of "implied consent" is being actively fought with GDPR. You have to provide explicit consent to the usage of your data. And more importantly you can revoke it (at any point) and the site can't deny or degrade the service (unless the data is strictly necessary for a specific action related to the service).

With ePrivacy this will go one step further. Right now you only need to provide opt-out, which means most people will likely leave it as it. Going forward those additional services (marketing purposes, ad tracking) will need to be strictly opt-in (and there's already internal research done in some companies showing that marketing/ad opt-in rates will be 10-12% at best).

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#17

Post by jsemrau »

rhizome wrote: post #5
fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

It doesn't matter, since it doesn't even make it legal.

Stuff like this makes me so mad.

1. I don't have an account on Facebook. 2. Blocked Facebook domains via /etc/hosts 3. Use ghostery

And despite all of these steps it feels like we are wasting our brightest minds to always be a step ahead in surveilling what the humans of this world are doing to exploit it for targeted advertising.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#19

Post by mannykannot »

derefr wrote: post #13
fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us ? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors , too." Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corpo…

> Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time.

Not so if it is the only way for the business model to be profitable. More generally, this argument assumes that there is a fixed profit to the business, and the only thing to compete for is a bigger share of that fixed profit. The reality is that corporations are amenable to increasing the profit all around so long as they get part of it, and don't particularly care who gets exploited in the process. Conversely, they do tend to protest when the pool is reduced, even if it affects their competitors similarly.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#20

Post by chii »

derefr wrote: post #13
fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us ? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors , too." Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corpo…

nobody likes to be made an example of.

However, regulators like to make examples of bigger corporations since the publicity is more effective with them, and also they are able to both pay up and/or change.

Post reply on HN