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

401–410 of 1001 posts

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

#401

Post by tathougies »

freedomben wrote: post #157
bertolo1988 wrote: post #143

Nothing will happen to companies outside the EU. You can violate GDPR freely. There is no possible way they can enforce any law, fine or penalty outside their borders. They won't even try.

I heard one person say that they were worried about traveling to Europe to visit if they had any GDPR violations. Do you that's a valid concern?

The EU or its member countries are free to arrest whoever they want whenever they want on their own soil, and not face any kind of externally enforceable sanctions. Best way to avoid being subject to arrest in a foreign country is to simply not go there.

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

#403

Post by threatofrain »

ams6110 wrote: post #111
newman8r wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why you'd be disappointed - if popular websites started blocking US customers I'd be pretty bummed out as well (even if it was easy to circumvent). As a dev though, I also understand the frustration. Creating startups is already time-intensive and stressful. A lot of us are on shoestring budgets. Most startups will fail. To a solo developer in the US, the idea of spending time understanding and complying wi…

As a developer I can understand this point of view, but as a consumer I say it's time to grow up. Internet startups have taken a "move fast and break things" approach that is analogous to early industrial revolution approaches to worker safety, product efficacy and safety, and environmental protection. You're working in the real world, with real consequences if you end up exposing people's personal data. The party is…

But you're not the only consumer, and your dollar is your biggest voice. Other consumers may be voicing a different concept of maturity than yours.

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

#404

Post by Zooper »

dnomad wrote: post #339
acatton wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a French guy, these type of comments make me smile. The GDPR is basically just the implementation of the French law "Informatique et Liberté" into the European Level. (You can read on HN many Germans saying that it's actually the implementation of the Datenschutzgesetzt. The truth is: these two laws are extremely similar.) This law has been in application since 1978 [1]. And in 2018, we have adtech companies like…

Yes, none of this is new or surprising. The irony here is that American users are so used to being endlessly surveiled without consequence that they are genuinely shocked that the rest of the world refuses to put up with this bullshit. This is completely normal to them. The GDPR is just another step in a global fight by people all over the world to regain their data sovereignty and protect themselves from endless sur…

American users are not celebrating anything; the populace here is half-mad, the result of decades of targeted propaganda and marketing honed upon the edge of surveillance by a gruel of barely distinguishable private and public actors. In its last election the US learned that these strings could be plucked by foreign actors by simply buying them, but strayed dangerously close to informing the public that such things were bought, that a misinformed public in a particular localized region could be sold as a packaged product and that misinformation was the product, the apex-goal: to create an identity around a false belief. I attribute much of the US' mental health problems to the disparity between the advertisement and reality.

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

#405

Post by droopybuns »

acatton wrote: post #218
manigandham wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about privacy, its about poorly written regulation that leaves too much vagueness because its based on principles rather than hard rules. Good intentions are not enough, there must be clear paths to implementation and verification. Perhaps that should've been fixed instead of wondering why so many companies don't really want to deal with it. It will also do just about nothing in regards to the major companie…

As a French guy, these type of comments make me smile. The GDPR is basically just the implementation of the French law "Informatique et Liberté" into the European Level. (You can read on HN many Germans saying that it's actually the implementation of the Datenschutzgesetzt. The truth is: these two laws are extremely similar.) This law has been in application since 1978 [1]. And in 2018, we have adtech companies like…

Every time you log data to solve a problem, you now need to review and decide if that data needs to be accessible for review and deletion.

It is a blocker that slows down your efforts to work on the next feature. It is not hacker friendly. It is a huge pain in the ass.

Edit: btw, I don’t really blame the EU. Google and Facebook got us into this mess.

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

#406

Post by danieltillett »

rightos wrote: post #269
shiado wrote: post #113

I simply don't understand how or why a law that has scope in the EU is causing trouble for companies which conduct no business in the EU beyond responding to HTTP requests on a global decentralized telecommunications network. Why would an American internet business which conducts no operations in Europe and has no servers in Europe be subject to regulation that affects the EU? What is going to happen? Is the EU going…

I'm wondering this too actually, I run a small business, we collect only the bare minimum of information from our customers but we do have some European customers. I'm ignoring GDPR completely, is there any downside for me? Will they block customers from using my service? Will they sieze my European cloud servers? Or can I safely do nothing as I currently am because I don't reside or have a registered business in Eur…

Nobody just doing ordinary business things is going to get caught up in the GDPR. The EU are going to go after the local companies first and/or the worst offenders. Just sit back and wait for the case law and best practices to settle down and then decide what to do.

My feeling is it is going to end up like the cookie law, but who knows at this stage.

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

#407

Post by chernobogdan »

Jeema101 wrote: post #239
shiado wrote: post #113

I simply don't understand how or why a law that has scope in the EU is causing trouble for companies which conduct no business in the EU beyond responding to HTTP requests on a global decentralized telecommunications network. Why would an American internet business which conducts no operations in Europe and has no servers in Europe be subject to regulation that affects the EU? What is going to happen? Is the EU going…

It's because: A) The law seems to extend beyond the borders of the EU. B) It's extremely long and vague, doesn't really offer a lot of actionable advice, and nobody outside of privacy lawyers seems to really understand it fully. C) The penalties are harsh. Further muddying the waters, the EU and US already have some existing bilateral agreements with respect to data privacy [1], but does the GDPR supersede or unilate…

> The law seems to extend beyond the borders of the EU.

Hi guys,

It's Kim from the Best Korea, and we just decided that we are going to allow our people to access the Internet.

There is a tiny little thing though, our internet policy stipulates that for every traffic hit to sites outside our borders, the country of origin either donates 1 nuke or if it doesn't have nukes an item of great value, or a 24 hour TV broadcast featuring me.

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

#408

Post by Msurrow »

shiado wrote: post #113

I simply don't understand how or why a law that has scope in the EU is causing trouble for companies which conduct no business in the EU beyond responding to HTTP requests on a global decentralized telecommunications network. Why would an American internet business which conducts no operations in Europe and has no servers in Europe be subject to regulation that affects the EU? What is going to happen? Is the EU going…

Well thats because you dont understand GDPR. If the company doesnt conduct any business in EU - or more correctly with EU private persones - then GDPR doesnt apply to the company. It also doesnt apply for any Business-2-business relations.

GDPR only applies if you are providing a service to a EU citizen. That also explains what EU will do if a company doesnt comply with GDPR (where it should); they will stop the company from providing those services to the EU citizen.

This is also why blocking EU traffic doesnt make you GDPR compliant (I can use a vpn or visit your site when travelling, and then you are still providing a service to a EU citizen).

If the case really is as you say, with just serving http request, then you have no issue with being GDPR compliant, because you dont store and information about the EU citizen. If however you are not just serving http requests, but track the user or otherwise store information on the site visitor, then you may have GDPR issues. But if you do store data about your users, you really should treat the data correctly.

GDPR is common sense, and if you bother to understand it correctly, its fairly easy to be compliant. Though I’d say, the bigger the company the more complex the implementation.

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

#409

Post by takeitto »

eli wrote: post #387
takeitto wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a foreign requirement that feels like a violation of sovereignty. Sure, if you cater to users in your own country. If you cater (read: deal with data) to users from the EU, you should follow local consumer protection laws. EU laws have always been more strict than US privacy laws: This caused unfair competition, where US companies were free to export their privacy-damaging business model overseas, while local…

What does it mean for a website to "cater" to just my home country? The internet doesn't know political boundaries and most sites cater to all visitors on some marginal level.

The internet doesn't know, but e-commerce/data business pretty darn well knows where their customers/users are situated.

The old web was mostly static websites. We spoke of visitors. The new web is app-ified/interactive, walled off to logged-in agreement-abiding geolocated users, and even a single logged-out "visit" broadcasts this to 100s of trackers who will remember your every move online.

Post reply on HN