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Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

bbc.com

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Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#131

Post by mortehu »

henrikschroder wrote: post #87
dmortin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody has to pay for it in the end, so Facebook could simply say "agree to targeted advertising and use the site for free or do not agree and pay a monthly fee for the site".

Sign me up! The sad truth though is that the users who are most likely to pay to get rid of ads, are also the users that are most valuable to advertisers, because that's a signal they have more money to spend than the rest.

You can disable Google's ad targeting at any time: https://adssettings.google.com/ You don't have to pay anything. What you get instead is untargeted ads, like ads for cars, potato chips, and shampoo, just like on TV. Personally I find those to be a lot more annoying.

Facebook's ad targeting can be similarly disabled under https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_s...

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#132

Post by [deleted] »

lloydsparkes wrote: post #38

I am reading through the complaints, The first one: https://noyb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/complaint-android... The User sets up a "new" (non Google) phone, and isn't given an option to decline consent to Googles ToS. Now how does this work with a physical product? It needs to be compliant on the 25th of May 2018, but the version of Android may be old and not updated (given its Android). Even if there was an upda…

[deleted]

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#133

Post by Macha »

scrollaway wrote: post #120
tazjin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be great if companies offered a "buy back your privacy" subscription model. For the services I really don't want to stop using (Twitter ...) I'd definitely be using that.

https://gsuite.google.com/ A lot of people don't seem to know that GSuite is both usable (useful, even) and affordable (cheap!) even if you are a solo user. Here's a quick howto: 1. Go buy your own domain name (~$10/yr, https://www.gandi.net/ ). Make it something you like, something professional. This is for your personal email address. firstname@lastname is the most common pattern. I recommend everybody do this. Eve…

Is GSuite better from a privacy perspective? It doesn't show ads in gmail, but I'm pretty sure they're still tracking you and feeding that into ads on youtube etc.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#134

Post by mirko22 »

sleepyhead wrote: post #85
testplzignore wrote: post #3

This is the crux of the problems with how companies are interpreting the GDPR. Every service I've seen with a privacy policy pop up within the last 24 hours has basically justified all of their current data collecting practices as being necessary for their business. The spirit of the GDPR is to improve privacy, not just make Terms of Service pages longer.

Actually the spirit of GDPR is also to make Terms of Service shorter by being clear and understandable. If you as a user is unable to understand what you are agreeing to then it is a violation of GDPR.

> unable to understand

What if he is not very smart? Or even better, what if he is very dumb?

At which level should those be written then?

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#135

Post by m-localhost »

dx034 wrote: post #65
chatmasta wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the positive side, it could also reduce product lock-in by increasing data portability. For example if I'm creating a social network startup, and users can export their data from Facebook in a parseable format, then it's trivial for me to offer an "import your data from Facebook" feature. The interesting question then becomes, could Facebook do anything about that? In the past they would be able to sue the startup…

The data belongs to the user. There's nothing Facebook can do to prevent exporting if it's via the data backup. They can just design it in a way that is easy to read by humans but very challenging for parsers.

What's with generated images (some crap like facebook frames or generated slideshows etc) doesn't have facebook the copyright on those - at least the designs? Should those be included in the export?

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#136

Post by dmortin »

simias wrote: post #130
dmortin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That other free service also encounters the same dilemma. They have to pay for the site, so either they take your data or make you pay.

You can have ads without tracking. But frankly I'm 100% happy if you actually have a choice of "give your data or pay". It's a massive improvement over "give your data or don't use the service" or "give your data and pay" which is what we have today.

If people force the issue then I expect big sites will give you this option. But it won't be necessarily cheap, so most people will opt to use the free version instead.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#137

Post by michaelbuckbee »

VMG wrote: post #71
ckastner wrote: post #6

> "The GDPR explicitly allows any data processing that is strictly necessary for the service - but using the data additionally for advertisement or to sell it on needs the users' free opt-in consent" This is the key point. As the saying goes, on Facebook, you aren't the customer, you are the product. The GDPR just changed this -- rightfully, in my opinion.

The GDPR ensures that only Facebook will be able to comply, and prospective competitors shouldn't even bother. The regulation counts 58 000 words.

The regulation's big but it's probably not larger than a sprawling API documentation, etc. and you approach it the same way: just read what you need.

IIRC almost _half_ of the actual regulation is about what and how the member countries should set up their internal supervisory authorities and the rest is similarly specific.

There are innumerable checklists, summaries and guides on how to deal with GDPR as well.

The two I like are:

https://blog.varonis.com/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain-eng...

and

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#138

Post by ldjb »

rightos wrote: post #121
lloydsparkes wrote: post #38

I am reading through the complaints, The first one: https://noyb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/complaint-android... The User sets up a "new" (non Google) phone, and isn't given an option to decline consent to Googles ToS. Now how does this work with a physical product? It needs to be compliant on the 25th of May 2018, but the version of Android may be old and not updated (given its Android). Even if there was an upda…

I'm pretty sure that's incorrect at least today, it's possible to skip through the initial setup on a stock Android device without adding a Google account or accepting a ToS.

If there is, they don't make it obvious. Whenever I've tried setting up a stock Android phone, I've looked for a way to do so without adding a Google account, but found no such option.

Perhaps it's possible to do so by pressing or holding some obscure sequence of buttons, but in that case it is reasonable to argue that a 'hidden' option isn't really an option at all. After all, you can't hide microscopic text on a paper contract and expect signees to be bound by it.

There may be stock Android phones out there that do provide a clear option to not use a Google account, but there are certainly many phones that do not.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#139

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mrweasel wrote: post #49
VMG wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or anyone who has a public httpd with default log settings

I was actually looking for a way to configure something like filebeat to replace IPs with country codes, before shipping the logs of to a central logging server. On the face of it, it was more trouble than I could be bothered to deal with at the time, but now I may have to take another look.

For that matter, could you just slice it down to a /16 or /24?

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#140

Post by kowdermeister »

letsgetphysITal wrote: post #113
kowdermeister wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and isn't given an option to decline consent to Googles ToS You can turn off the phone and sell it on Ebay

Hobson's Choice regarding tracking / data collection consent is specifically a breach of GDPR.

The option to refuse the new terms is there, it's just not explicit. I'm not saying this is nice or good, but OP's comment sounded like there's no option, they just made it less obvious.
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