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Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

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Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#361

Post by lotu »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #275
gsich wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

usefulness today is not because of ads.

A lot of the usefulness today is bankrolled by ads.

I don't get why you are being downvoted so many huge things are literally funded by ads. Google Maps is funded by ads, so is all of Google X. The money that started the development of self driving cars and made people believe it was something we could be done soon was funded by ads. Where did Facebook get 2 billion dollars to by Oclous to provide funding for VR? Ads. Perhaps in a future we will have a good model for micropayments and you can pay .1 cents for every webpage you visit be in the meantime ads provide the revenue streams that make this work.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#362

Post by lotu »

halukakin wrote: post #264

By saying "cookies and pixels" they are trying to downplay what they are really doing. On a website where facebook pixel is installed, they track pretty much every form submitted and even the contents of those form submissions.

I think you dramatically overestimating the value that you might get from form submissions, provided you are intending to commit identity fraud. Which literally no-one is suggesting ad tracking is doing.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#363

Post by chimeracoder »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #360
chimeracoder wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if the index treats lobbying and donation millions to support elections as corruption. Such activities are illegal and considered corruption in most countries. Lobbying has nothing to do with donating money, and lobbying elected representatives is definitely not illegal in most democracies.

I explicitly wrote "lobbying AND donation". Please don't twist conversation into debates about semantics: it's not helpful.

> I explicitly wrote "lobbying AND donation". Please don't twist conversation into debates about semantics: it's not helpful.

Yes, and you said that both are illegal in most "other" counties. Except lobbying isn't illegal in any healthy democracy, including in Europe. Donating "millions of dollars" isn't really legal in the US either.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#364

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Sylos wrote: post #340
2aa07e2 wrote: post #197

My question is, will I be able to use gmail without my google searches being tracked? Google did a great job to "bundle" its ToS into a single generic agreement for all the services under that "Your Google account" umbrella. I would love to opt out of that agreement, retroactively, and still be able to use gmail.

I would also strongly recommend not using Gmail. Google sifts through your e-mails, which compromises a cornerstone of your digital identity. People needing to send you an e-mail will also seldomly appreciate their e-mail being read by Google. To answer your question, though, if you live in the EU, then the GDPR, due to be enforced on the 25th of May, does make this practise of Google most definitely illegal. So, in…

Google sifts through your e-mails, which compromises a cornerstone of your digital identity. People needing to send you an e-mail will also seldomly appreciate their e-mail being read by Google.

Google doesn't "read your email", they index it. Which allows you to search it. And then they show ads that are targeted to keywords that appear in the index. Gasp!

I seriously don't understand what the big deal is. Genuinely, what is the risk or concern here?

And I really doubt that GDPR is going to kill Gmail. They need that index to provide the search capability, if nothing else.

I think many of you who are fans of GDPR are going to be gravely disappointed.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#365

Post by Sylos »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #364
Sylos wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also strongly recommend not using Gmail. Google sifts through your e-mails, which compromises a cornerstone of your digital identity. People needing to send you an e-mail will also seldomly appreciate their e-mail being read by Google. To answer your question, though, if you live in the EU, then the GDPR, due to be enforced on the 25th of May, does make this practise of Google most definitely illegal. So, in…

Google sifts through your e-mails, which compromises a cornerstone of your digital identity. People needing to send you an e-mail will also seldomly appreciate their e-mail being read by Google. Google doesn't "read your email", they index it. Which allows you to search it. And then they show ads that are targeted to keywords that appear in the index. Gasp! I seriously don't understand what the big deal is. Genuinely…

Well, tell me what the big risk or concern of a Google employee sitting down and actually reading your e-mail is?

Them indexing it, correlating it with all that other data they already have on you, storing and actively working with this data, including allowing 3rd parties to run near-arbitrary JavaScript on your client, based on near-arbitrary criteria they can specify, is in my opinion much worse.

Opens you up for this data being stolen off of Google's servers and for all kinds of attacks:

- Spear phishing

- Narrowing down the criteria, so that it only targets you, then reading out the IP that you're connecting from. If you're travelling from public WiFi to public WiFi, this can describe your path extremely precisely.

- Malware distribution in those ads. As the ads can be targetted to relatively small groups, they aren't going to be as thoroughly vetted and malware can go unnoticed for quite a while.

As for the GDPR killing Gmail, that's not what I meant. They'll have to make a good few adjustments, but they'll be able to continue operating it.

What I meant is killing Google's practise of having every question of consent being ticked off with one global ToS. That is something where the GDPR is quite clear that it's not legal. You have to ask for consent for each piece of information individually (exempt is information that you actually need to operate the service) and you're in general not allowed to bury questions of consent in ToS.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#366

Post by ThrustVectoring »

kome wrote: post #139
dalbasal wrote: post #122

Two kind of related points. The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents .(b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. Privacy is an issue and we need to do something about it. But, I have a real feeling cencorship, corporate-protectionism, copyright and other agen…

> The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. That's like saying that democracy is disturbing, but it's the best we have got. FB should respect laws in Belgium, that's it. I don't trust "governance", I trust "government": because it is only at a national level that we see a bit of democratic accountability.

Should Facebook also respect laws in Thailand and remove content for lese majeste? If I lease out a server in the US for $10/mo to serve my blog, should I?

Facebook following Belgian law isn't the issue; the issue is that jurisdiction questions have to answer a lot of less-palatable questions the same way.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#367

Post by [deleted] »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #28
fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

> if it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical Nope, not at all. Standard practice does not override ethics. Tobacco companies would consider advertising and promoting smoking as industry practice, but we cracked down down on that because encouraging people to do something that is demonstrably bad for their health was something we decided wasn't ethical and would be cracked down on.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#368

Post by zaarn »

Silhouette wrote: post #317
zaarn wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a possibility. The GDPR does forbid hinging service quality/availability on consent but I don't think it forbids putting it behind a paywall as alternative.

The GDPR does forbid hinging service quality/availability on consent Although this is one of the areas where it seems some sort of challenge is inevitable. Requiring businesses to give people more control over data about them is one thing. Requiring businesses to do things that make no business sense, like providing services to people despite getting nothing in return, is something else entirely.

It doesn't forbid you to provide free service, to my understanding, you can charge for the service but you can't provide a worse free experience when a user opts out.

Additionally, this does not affect data that is necessary to operate the service. When you run a GPS tracker app then it is entirely okay to ask for the right to process someone's position as part of that contract (as long as you don't share it with a third party).

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#369

Post by geezerjay »

manfredo wrote: post #353
Feniks wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its quite normal in my opinion for the police to invest more resources in pursuing a kidnapping case than a bicycle theft.

It'd be more like vigorously investigating a kidnapping case in a wealthy, high-profile neighborhood while ignoring kidnappings in other places. Which, granted, is something that happens but people largely regard this kind of unequal protection of the law to be a bad thing.

> It'd be more like vigorously investigating a kidnapping case in a wealthy, high-profile neighborhood while ignoring kidnappings in other places.

I don't see the point of this sort of "but johnny did it too" line of argument. So authorities are looking into a report of widespread abuse. Where's the relevance of not advertising how they may or may not look into other small-scale and lower-profile cases? In fact, aren't resources better spent by going after the single largest and more eggregious source of abuse that has a global reach and has been continuously abusing its position for over a decade?

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