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

However, I also believe that unenforceable parts of a contract have no effect, except in the minds of the parties to that contract. My suspicion is that contracts are sometimes drafted with this in mind.

I don’t see how that implies “if you’re a member of the club, you must receive marketing / offers”. It only says “only members receive marketing / offers”

So if I'm not willing to complete several hours of training modules uncompensated and before the start date of my contract, I'm within my rights to refuse. But this violation of most states' codes is common practice, and when I inform a new workplace that I'm not going to do it, they tell me it's "required," and the part they're careful not to put in writing is that my contract will be canceled if I make a fuss (there is almost always a clause in these contracts saying they can cancel any time for any reason).

So just move onto the next job, right? But the market is very feast-or-famine. It's just not smart to assert my rights during one of the famine periods.

Similarly, if I'm not willing to sign a lease for a rental saying my landlord is entitled to seize and sell all of my property for being even a minute late on rent, I've now considerably limited my housing options, which is not good when I have a new job that starts in two weeks. If that landlord then goes and tells all their landlord friends that I'm "difficult," I could be completely fucked.

Sure, it's "solved." It sucks anyway.

Specifically, you're typically giving the office's providers and their marketing "affiliates" and your insurance company and its marketing "affiliates" the right to forward around (through any length chains of agreements) your entire medical history associated with enough (research proven as de-anonymizing) details to retarget you personally. And you're typically doing this by accepting a company insurance (in the US) or the provider's reception counter while you're in need of care.

This effectively forced consent is arguably illegal, but as far as I know, untested, so it's standard across the medical system and across omnibus insurance (e.g. company-provided healthcare "plan").

Of course, every touch point is another place your personal history will get stolen and rolled into modern digitally scripted exploitation of your identity and or targeted forms of phish-mongering (a term I made up meaning marketing so personalized you believe it's necessary to sign up for and pay for).

If you have any relationship with the team at your company that procures employee insurance packages, see if you can persuade them to start with the firm's insurance consultant (high end) or broker (low end) and systematically remove every step in the "we can pass along all your info to our affiliates for our own pinky-swear good reasons like making more money off your private info" chain.

In our experience, this added 3+ months to the procurement process as every single provider balked until interacted with by counsel -- and then instantly capitulated.

Our goal was always to give our employees a top tier benefits package, and we consider it a top tier hard-to-match employee benefit to not have random firms and government agencies pawing through your doctors notes, prescription histories, lab results, and enough biographical data to fake your digital twin.

Sadly, most employees -- though none of them are sheeple -- shrug at that for reasons in this thread: no time to fight such pervasive exploitation, especially when it hits them while needing a service as it hit you, or just plain weary of trying. So much easier, and psychically healthier, to just avoid thinking about it. Everyone is resigned.

If a company you consider working for claims "we take your privacy seriously" ask if they got privacy waivers removed on your behalf from all vendor contracts including payroll (does your salary go to 'work number'?) and insurance providers (can your data leave your doctor's EMR?). Odds are, they do not, in fact, take your privacy as seriously as they could.