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Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

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Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#131

Post by dspillett »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #69
kryogen1c wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

neat, this analogy travels pretty far - user data is radioactive. theres a background amount of radiation. its everywhere, even in higher amounts than youd expect like bananas and airplanes. no amount is safe, but the risks are neglibly small when exposure is minimized. concentrated amounts can be safe when exposure is controlled and managed with oversight programs in place. disasters can be managed with disaster pro…

Ah, the linear no threshold theory of radiation. If background radiation is everywhere , how can there be no safe dose . It’s a fun analogy, but reinforces an incorrect assumption.

> If background radiation is everywhere, how can there be no safe dose.

Easy: there is no absolutely safe dose.

At normal background levels the chance of it causing you significant trouble before something else has long since killed you off in some other way is practically zero so there effectively a “safe enough” dose. But if you are very very unlucky background levels could cause you an embuggerance that becomes life changing or life ending.

It is more complicated than safe doses of most (but obviously not all) drugs/poisons/etc, because for most of the latter they are purged from your system in fairly short order assuming you survive the initial hit, so the next hit if there is one of equal strength is likely to have much the same effect. Radiation tends to hang around a lot longer so repeated exposure to higher levels builds up so the safe dose has to be stated “over time” rather than being simplified to a fixed dose perhaps related to your mass.

There was a village (unfortunately I can't find the reference in a quick search ATM) where there was/is an unusually high incidence of thyroid cancer which was thought to be a genetic pre-disposition as the population stated from a fairly small gene pool, but is now thought to be because the background radiation in the area is a bit higher than elsewhere due to the makeup of the local ground rocks. The difference is nothing to worry about if passing through or visiting regularly, in fact the difference is small enough not to be a major concern to the locals, but a lifetime of the extra exposure is enough to at least be visible in certain health stats.

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#132

Post by Terry_Roll »

phoe-krk wrote: post #95
Terry_Roll wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can collect as much data as you like, its what you do with it that counts.

I don't think your statement holds true in practice. Collecting data that you then don't do anything with, in theory or even in practice, is also something that GDPR penalizes, since there's no need for you to collect it if you claim you don't do anything with it.

Not doing something with the data is also a function, just like Nulls are a value, so yes you are right that collecting the data and not doing anything with it could be viewed negatively when up before data commissioners. Its interesting watching how the IT industry views GDPR and the advice given out by various law firms. You see unlike maths which is pure, language is vague and open to interpretation, the trick is convincing the decision maker ie data commissioner or judge that your interpretation is the correct one and not just an incorrect herd mentality sweeping the IT industry, which you see in the comments posted here and elsewhere.

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#133

Post by cblconfederate »

jacquesm wrote: post #129
cblconfederate wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Data IS owned, by the person the data pertains to This is an almost undefined concept. Data is not copyright, they are observations. Plus for many kinds of data ownership is hard to define, e.g. genetic data which is largely shared by all of us.

You can try as hard as you can to wriggle out from understanding what this is all about but it is actually pretty clear: data supplied by an individual is the property of that individual, they have the right to informed consent on what it is used for, they can ask you to delete it, they can ask you to update it or review it. In some cases other laws (for instance: tax law) can make it mandatory for you to keep certai…

most of the data relevant to gdpr legal cases are not supplied by the user, they are collected indirectly.

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#134

Post by ziddoap »

aidenn0 wrote: post #81
rileymat2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t it be like playing Russian roulette with a gun that has billions of chambers? The gun is always unsafe, but you will probably be fine? The higher the level, the more full chambers?

That's also the linear no threshold model. The risk of dying increases linearly with the number of bullets you load. A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful.

>A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful.

Ah, the classic shoot yourself with small caliber bullets to build up an immunity against the larger caliber ones!

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#135

Post by dspillett »

aidenn0 wrote: post #81
rileymat2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t it be like playing Russian roulette with a gun that has billions of chambers? The gun is always unsafe, but you will probably be fine? The higher the level, the more full chambers?

That's also the linear no threshold model. The risk of dying increases linearly with the number of bullets you load. A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful.

> A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign

Nothing in what others have said suggests low levels are deadly or even likely to be damaging, at leas not over the time frame of a human life as defined by the many things that can take us out.

> or even helpful.

A larger amount of something being damaging does not rule out a small amount being helpful, there just comes a point when the potential danger starts to outweigh the potential benefits. Water is very beneficial, necessary in fact, but too much of it over a short time will kill you.

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#136

Post by bcrosby95 »

headmelted wrote: post #71
jacquesm wrote: post #16

The sooner companies start to realize that personal data is a liability rather than an asset the better. Happy to see this fine, but as far as I'm concerned given the kind of data we're talking about here it should have been higher.

It's a slap on the wrist. 100x this fine would have been appropriate. Anything less just encourages other companies to treat privacy and data security as a joke.

That would be more than the full value of the company. Seems a little steep for the first fine.

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#137

Post by Mordisquitos »

charcircuit wrote: post #45
breakfastduck wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What aspect of GDPR is troublesome to you? Because 'dont abuse your ownership of personal data' is pretty much what it boils down to.

>What aspect of GDPR is troublesome to you? It tries to restrict data. Information wants to be free. It has no owner.

Should we therefore decriminalise unauthorised computer access and publication of data "owned" by any business or organisation?

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#138

Post by dspillett »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #77
rvnx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a second, it's not Grindr gathering and selling a list of homosexuals interested into sex. It's the users themselves who actively register on Grindr to announce their services and picture on the platform. If this activity is illegal in the country of the user, the best Grindr can do, is to prevent users from these countries from registering on the platform based on their national ID, but that's basically it.

The users aren’t gathering aggregated data of millions of other users and selling it.

Or just more lazily selling it en-mass for the buyers to aggregate and otherwise process, along with anything they've picked up elsewhere.

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#139

Post by cik2e »

MauranKilom wrote: post #74
cik2e wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, to use your analogy, why would companies treat user data like uranium when risk/reward is like that of oil? Grinder surely made much more from data sales than the 6.something million Erous it was find. The paltry fines under GDPR do nothing to dissuade this behavio. That's been a recurring theme in previous HN discussions on this topic. Right now, I would posit that these low penalties are for show. Governments…

> Grinder surely made much more from data sales than the 6.something million Erous it was find. ...sure, but they also had business expenses. Fining them for all the revenue would more or less instantly kill the company, which is hardly the goal.

I've got an estimate here that says Grindr is doing 31 million dollars net on over 100 mil revenue per year. I am by no means in favor of running these companies into the ground. The fines are definitely a balancing act. But it seems at the present moment the expected value of breaking the rules is substantily higher than 0.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ppp-gr...

Re: Grindr €6.5M fined for not collecting users’ valid consent for sharing data

#140

Post by emn13 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #81
rileymat2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t it be like playing Russian roulette with a gun that has billions of chambers? The gun is always unsafe, but you will probably be fine? The higher the level, the more full chambers?

That's also the linear no threshold model. The risk of dying increases linearly with the number of bullets you load. A different model suggests that very low levels are either benign or even helpful.

I can't find any solid supporting sources that provide any evidence that there exists a positively safe dosage, but even the linear-no-threshold models suggest the effects of low dosages are small enough to be hard to measure; i.e. which model is correct is practically irrelevant for low enough (e.g. 1-10 mSv?) dosages.
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