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Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

theintercept.com

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Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#181

Post by wisemang »

technerder wrote: post #174
yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

I really do hope our politicians in Canada pass something like this

Perhaps not quite what you’re looking for but this may be of interest: https://accessmyinfo.ca

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#183

Post by shadowgovt »

dmitriid wrote: post #104
legitster wrote: post #37

I run a part of the data request process at our company. This article is an example where people expect anything technology related to be magic. We have to go through EVERY tech stack we own and look for that person's data. It's amazingly manual and tedious and takes about 6 people about an hour per request. We're working to automate it, but needless to say we try not to broadcast it too broadly. I hate that everyone…

> We have to go through EVERY tech stack we own and look for that person's data. It's amazingly manual and tedious and takes about 6 people about an hour per request. GDPR went into effect 5 years ago . If 5 years later you still haven't automated this...

Ironically, automating it would mean that cross-data-silo joins were automated. This would be a net decrease of user privacy.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#184

Post by EEBio »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #179
yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

> The solution is to escalate your request to the local data protection agency In many countries in Europe, you can expect a response within 30-90 days acknowledging receipt, and an actual response that they'll look into it and request a statement from the company after a year or so. Sometimes you get lucky, but then only hear back that the company has now changed that one specific bad behavior (after profiting from…

In Europe the GDPR states that businesses have a single calendar month to respond to you, either with the data, how to easily get them, or a damn good reason why they couldn't comply in time.

It happened to me once that a business hasn't responded in time, but after I sent them a follow up that they are breaking the law by ignoring my request, they responded right away the next day.

I also only sent the requests to the biggest offenders, so the sample is small.

30-90 days is therefore possibly the period one should expect to wait to get a response, even though more than approx. 30 days is illegal.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#185

Post by dmitriid »

shadowgovt wrote: post #183
dmitriid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have to go through EVERY tech stack we own and look for that person's data. It's amazingly manual and tedious and takes about 6 people about an hour per request. GDPR went into effect 5 years ago . If 5 years later you still haven't automated this...

Ironically, automating it would mean that cross-data-silo joins were automated. This would be a net decrease of user privacy.

That is not necessarily true.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#186

Post by [deleted] »

bmn__ wrote: post #91
MaxGanzII wrote: post #76

I've been trying for over two years to get my data from Amazon. I eventually got to a point where Amazon provided a web-page, which has no less than sixty-two download links on, each of which would have to be manually operated. It's properly tantamount to obstruction. After finally reaching this point, Support were arrogant and high-handed - "We will not do any more than we have. We look forward to seeing you on Amaz…

> I eventually got to a point where Amazon provided a web-page, which has no less than sixty-two download links on, each of which would have to be manually operated. > I still do not have my data. > I want to get my personal data Is there a good reason why you don't take the three minutes to click the 62 download links?

[deleted]

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#187

Post by koesterd »

bobmichael wrote: post #138
yoaviram wrote: post #92

I'm one of the creators of YourDigitalRights.org, a service which automates the process of sending data requests (it's free, open source and were a registered charity). What is described in this article is, unfortunately, a common case with some big tech companies. I've recently started an experiment to send data deletion requests to 600 data brokers and document what happens. It's dark patterns all the way down. The…

That's so great. I wish there was something like this for Germany.

A similar service for German users is Datenanfragen.de

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#188

Post by sean2 »

ok123456 wrote: post #169
y04nn wrote: post #28

I had to click through more than 100 links to download all the data, how can this be acceptable? Specially coming from Amazon. How hard is it for them to create an archive with all the data? This is ridiculous, I can't imagine how was the meeting when they decided to produce purposefully such garbage UX.

Can't you open up the developer tools use a css query to select all the buttons, and send a click event to them all?

Yes, most commenters on HN could could, but for the general public, it's not a great interface.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#189

Post by lrem »

yoaviram wrote: post #142
bobmichael wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so great. I wish there was something like this for Germany.

We support the GDPR, so it will work in Germany.

Does the GDPR mandate usage of English? I know orgs that will allow antispam eat any communication not in the local language.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#190

Post by lrem »

y04nn wrote: post #28

I had to click through more than 100 links to download all the data, how can this be acceptable? Specially coming from Amazon. How hard is it for them to create an archive with all the data? This is ridiculous, I can't imagine how was the meeting when they decided to produce purposefully such garbage UX.

I'm not sure "an archive with all the data" is what you really want either. At some point you'll hit the limit of how much data does your filesystem allow in one file. Not sure if your browser is that good at resuming failed downloads too.
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