Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

apility.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#311

Post by saagarjha »

CreepGin wrote: post #308
saagarjha wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this pretty much what happened with the cookie law? It states that cookies necessary for the functioning of sites were ok, but everyone ended up putting up those warnings anyways and it greatly diluted any benefit of the rule and it ended up like Prop 65: warnings everywhere, even when they weren't useful. Overall, it just led to the law being ridiculed.

Wait what? Really? All the annoying "cookie" popups I've seen were them telling me the cookies were used for necessary function. I always thought it was due to some European law. Are you telling me it's not even required by the law?

If you're using cookies for storing stuff like login information, you don't need a cookie notice. If you're using cookies for tracking, you do need a notice.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#312

Post by takeitto »

ThJ wrote: post #53

I keep seeing these posts on how to block European users to avoid the GDPR. As a citizen of Europe, seeing these posts consistently making it to the front page is disappointing. It would seem that Silicon Valley perceives the GDPR as more of a hindrance than an opportunity to offer users better privacy. Nothing has been learned.

I am European browsing from a non-EU IP. Seems to me a blanket ban on EU IPs is both draconic and ineffective.

As for SV seeing GDPR as more of a hindrance: SV was build on the freemium model of gathering as much data as possible. Companies were funded under the assumption that their user growth would lead to valuable data stores.

GDPR and an increased privacy aware public are existential threats to these companies, as there is little chance to pivot to a non-data-use company. You have to start over.

I hope we will look back at these companies as ugly centralizing dinosaurs, as little by little, the consumers realize the power they gained back (or always had) over their usage and data, does not justify these business models to exist.

(Also, GDPR, even when seen as an opportunity, _is_ a hindrance to implement. Regulation in response to market evils is known to be heavy-handed and clumsy).

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#313

Post by azernik »

merinowool wrote: post #62
oh_sigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the GDPR if you think you carry its protection around when you visit non-European locales.

That is not true I am afraid.

The legal text refers to "data subjects in the EU". This is pretty straightforward language, people.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#314

Post by jonknee »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #280
zenovision wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need GDPR to hide your WHOIS records. Almost any domain registry provides WhoisGuard that will hide all your WHOIS data.

It’s a racket business - private registeation should be default.

Why? Property records are public in most countries. It doesn't seem ridiculous.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#315

Post by Pulcinella »

CreepGin wrote: post #308
saagarjha wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this pretty much what happened with the cookie law? It states that cookies necessary for the functioning of sites were ok, but everyone ended up putting up those warnings anyways and it greatly diluted any benefit of the rule and it ended up like Prop 65: warnings everywhere, even when they weren't useful. Overall, it just led to the law being ridiculed.

Wait what? Really? All the annoying "cookie" popups I've seen were them telling me the cookies were used for necessary function. I always thought it was due to some European law. Are you telling me it's not even required by the law?

Correct. The “necessary” function was that the website and advertisers wanted to track you all over the web. Login cookies and the like don’t require notices so if you see a notice it was because they wanted to track you.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#316

Post by weinzierl »

jacquesm wrote: post #248
jbfoo wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Are EU courts going to issue default judgements on businesses and individuals? > Against individuals: Unlikely, but it could happen AFAIK IANAL: GDPR doesn't apply to individuals that e.g. host mastodon instance.

Agreed, but execs of companies violating the law are also individuals, and those were the individuals I had in mind.

> GDPR doesn't apply to individuals

>> Agreed

Not a lawyer too, but I'm interested what makes you (and jbfoo) believe that it doesn't apply to individuals. It's a EU regulation it should apply to natural and legal persons.

Ok, it has an exception for the processing of data by natural persons in the course of a purely personal or household activity but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to individuals in general.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#317

Post by [deleted] »

merpnderp wrote: post #275
lsmarigo wrote: post #250

To offer a non-dev perspective on Hn, it feels like tech companies are really trying to annoy us users with GDPR updates in an effort to nurture opposition to similar proposed regulations in the future. I hope it doesn't work. I love GDPR, getting rid of the WHOIS database stuff alone is enough to make me a huge fan. The option to delete my data is also amazing.

Don’t get your hopes up for the US. This would have to overcome some amazing first amendment hurdles in the US. Short of slanderous and violent content, saying truthful things is protected.

[deleted]

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#318

Post by saagarjha »

taysic wrote: post #307
lsmarigo wrote: post #250

To offer a non-dev perspective on Hn, it feels like tech companies are really trying to annoy us users with GDPR updates in an effort to nurture opposition to similar proposed regulations in the future. I hope it doesn't work. I love GDPR, getting rid of the WHOIS database stuff alone is enough to make me a huge fan. The option to delete my data is also amazing.

> really trying to annoy us users with GDPR updates Isn't that the law that required these updates, pop ups, and new consent forms? Not sure how the companies could be blamed for that.

No: the law wants you to not have to do this. The law wants you to stop collecting data for things that are not core to your business. The issue is that companies are trying to maintain the status quo as much as possible, and annoying users with these does that.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#319

Post by manigandham »

Tomte wrote: post #301
tquinn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the EU regulators could stand to learn something. If EU citizens are small portion of your users, and your tasked with parsing this document http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... just blocking them doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, especially with the fines involved. I think the things that bother me is: 1) A College student working on a side project with no revenue are treated t…

> A College student working on a side project with no revenue are treated the same as some massive multi-national. And why not? The result/harm is the same. It doesn't matter a bit whether a company's web site is handing its visitors' data over to Facebook or a "private site" does. The side project or the private site always have the option of not participating in the adtech frenzy. But of course they want to partici…

No, it's not the same. The lack of proportionality is precisely why the UK/EU is such a hard place to conduct business.

These rules don't stop anything about ads, they just make them less targeted. Not a big deal, but it will increase the costs of serving users and thus decrease the total amount of commercial projects started.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#320

Post by ascorbic »

taysic wrote: post #307
lsmarigo wrote: post #250

To offer a non-dev perspective on Hn, it feels like tech companies are really trying to annoy us users with GDPR updates in an effort to nurture opposition to similar proposed regulations in the future. I hope it doesn't work. I love GDPR, getting rid of the WHOIS database stuff alone is enough to make me a huge fan. The option to delete my data is also amazing.

> really trying to annoy us users with GDPR updates Isn't that the law that required these updates, pop ups, and new consent forms? Not sure how the companies could be blamed for that.

No, most of them aren't required.
Post reply on HN