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

thatprivacyguy.com

221–230 of 308 posts

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

#221

I'm glad it all worked out for this individual. I hope more people live their lives like this as the dystopia progresses. Unfortunately, especially in the US, exercising your rights, or even just reading every paper you're expected to put your name to, not only constantly pisses people off for some reason, but also puts you at a significant disadvantage compared to the people that never push back in the interest of n…

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

#222
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't even make any sense. Fascism is generally about top-down enforced control, whereas contracts are heavily decentralized. The world where you'd have contracts override laws would be some sort of extreme anarcho-libertarian society, which is rather the opposite of fascism.

That's what you heard in school, defending the US style of fascism as "democratic". Fascism was a scheme to keep the old aristocrats turning industrialists to keep control of the state, whilst still keeping it under the democratic name. This was devised in the US in the 30ies and then in the old states also. Heavily supported by the US industrialists. Without them the fascism movement had no chance. The US scheme of…

"Corporatism" not "cooperatism" though, right?

Nothing wrong with cooperatism I think.

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

#223
Thankfully inbox providers are now mandating unsubscribe headers (so the unsubscribe button now sits at email client level, not within the body of the email, as it always should have). Making this entire thing irrelevant.

Going through the hassle of policing individual company behavior is beyond silly and a giant waste of resources when you can literally just force the behavior at client level.

This is also basically the story of why GDPR popups are stupid. Set it at the client (browser) level, not on 100,000,000 individual websites done slightly differently every time and try to setup an enforcement dragnet to have expensive fights over misplaced commas.

This should have always been a browser setting and not a multi-billion dollar Kafka-esque nightmare of lawyers and regulators policing every company on earth, wasting Europe's productivity and resources.

It's like how the US makes you file your own taxes when for 99% of people they already know the amount you owe, and then randomly will decide to fine you if your calculated number doesn't line up with their number. It's giant waste of everyones time.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went to a new doctor. As part of the check-in process, I was asked to "sign" a little digital pad, so, as I was told, they could properly use my insurance. I asked to see the hard copy of what I was signing and they couldn't find one. Then, for some reason, they were unable to print one. I gave up and scribbled my sig with my finger and then was seen by a doctor. It's maddening.

I'm sure someone smarter than me has a solution. Those papers you're required to sign are generally the result of regulation. Some law got passed that say "you can't share info unless you get signed permission". The person dreaming up the law thought that would be enough to stop getting them to share info. But, even if they cared about privacy, they don't want to increase all their expenses and run their own IT depar…

Are you even legally signing anything if they can't show you the document you are signing?

I am not familiar with the nitty gritty of US law, but under German law that signature would be worthless. Even signing a document you have but are unwilling to read is legally a bit iffy (which is why for things like real estate a notary will read the paperwork to you and ask if you understood it, or why surprising clauses in terms of service are unenforceable). Signing something without being able to know what you are signing would be worth exactly nothing, because you didn't actually knowingly consent to any particular thing, and neither did you have the "meeting of minds" required to form a contract.

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

#225

This fills my heart with joy. If only ICO in the UK would do the same.

ICO bothers to whine and plead sometimes!

But usually even the extensive evidence is indeed met with "eh, mate, can't you just ask them again?"

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

#226

And how much did it make them over those 5 years?

The fine is largely irrelevant, now they have faced enforcement we have a decision to file a Representative Actions Directive (equivalent of a US class action) claim with - the cost of that will be 100-1000x more than the fine and will likely lead to shareholder revolt as well (institutional shareholders will likely sue the parent Currys PLC for breach of fiduciary duty and not disclosing these issues during earnings…

Did Elgiganten change how it works yet?

Just for fun I signed up. During the signup they say that by becoming a member you accept that they will send things via email etc, but its optional to accept this, you can still click the signup button but then you don't get membership status, you just get an account. Then on the kundklubb page it says that you are not a member, if you click join it will automatically enable email, sms and phone communication, but you can disable them.

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

#227
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.

But if laws can override contracts (which presumably they can), then contracts can appear to establish permissions/restrictions that are illegal. At least one contract I've signed includes something about the rest being enforceable if any part of it isn't enforceable. Perhaps that helps to contain actual mistakes, but I assume employers use it to persuade employees that they're bound by illegal non-compete clauses, for example.

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

#228

I would like to see these regulations in place here. I have always felt very uncomfortable with companies like TurnItIn.com getting to train their models off of my work, without compensation, where my consent is assumed and there is no opt-out. I've brought this up before, and the general consensus was that my college enrollment is optional, and therefore my consent is freely given. I should have a right to attend a…

Hand in your paper when you’re on vacation or even better on a conference in Europe. GDPR will apply. Of course it will take so long that you won’t benefit from a decision for your studies. And one possible outcome is that your college won’t allow submitting from EU and won’t admit EU citizens (similar to US citizens having difficulties opening accounts in EU banks).

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

#229
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't even make any sense. Fascism is generally about top-down enforced control, whereas contracts are heavily decentralized. The world where you'd have contracts override laws would be some sort of extreme anarcho-libertarian society, which is rather the opposite of fascism.

That's what you heard in school, defending the US style of fascism as "democratic". Fascism was a scheme to keep the old aristocrats turning industrialists to keep control of the state, whilst still keeping it under the democratic name. This was devised in the US in the 30ies and then in the old states also. Heavily supported by the US industrialists. Without them the fascism movement had no chance. The US scheme of…

That's pretty far from the usual views of fascism. Generally fascism can be seen as a form of right wing collectivism organizing all of society into one big hierarchy, with industrialist somewhat below the top and subservient to political leadership. In a fascist society political decrees override both laws and contracts. This means that fascism is inherently centralized and that what companies receive state support depends on who are political favourites at the moment. E.g. a fascist state might support the independent oil companies if it felt the established industrialists were getting too influential, i.e. classical divide and conquer.

By the way, I'm not claiming the things you describe didn't take place for the reasons you claimed. I just don't think it's accurate to describe it as based on fascism.

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

#230

Good to know that this is illegal. One of my email providers also does this, maybe I’ll also have to try reporting them and see what happens.

EU only though. You can get away with pretty much anything outside of EU.

Or the UK, which is still in alignment for privacy regulation as far as I know.
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