511–520 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-stage startup use the best practice of “delete=1”. What's your system for dealing with COPPA then? You're required to have a way for permanently removing data of children.
COPA was struck down by the courts last decade.
https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/docs/new10136361...
I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…
If all you do about my PII is “set delete = 1” (which one could argue isn’t even the best practice in every scenario), then I probably don’t want you to handle my PII at all.
To your example, you could easily not switch to a CASCADE, but instead set delete=1 and rewrite every sensitive field with a special value. Doesn’t even require a DB migration.
If your attitude to properly handling sensitive information is “it’s too complicated and costly, so we’ll just not handle it and YOLO”, perhaps GDPR is a good reflecting moment for you.
[edit:typo, edit:clarification]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-stage startup use the best practice of “delete=1”. What's your system for dealing with COPPA then? You're required to have a way for permanently removing data of children.
COPPA only applies to sites that are directed towards children or have "actual knowledge" that they're collecting data from children. It's legally sufficient to ask for birthdays and refuse signups from anyone under 13.
I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…
Those seems like impositions on people who implement bad practice or work in fields that have morally questionable practices regarding people's data and identification. Many people I know don't engage or work in such industries because of the moral implications of doing so and what people are doing with data.
Its not about "just ask your lawyers" or "just call HR". Its about "well don't do dodgy/disrespectful stuff with customer data".
And if everyone is doing it or its regarded as "best practice" (as the old joke goes, best practice is just orwellian-speak for average), then that seems like MORE of an arguement why GDPR type activities and policies are required.
I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…
> Most early-stage startup use the best practice of “delete=1” Who are you people who can’t/won’t actually delete something from your db’s?
Past that, deleting things from databases is sometimes hard. If, for example, I delete userX, and userX was the founder of a number of forums, or chat rooms, or groups, or facebook pages that are linked to userX? Do those groups and forums and things count as 'belonging' to userX? If userX happened to be the guy who created /r/news, do we delete that subreddit, and all of the content therein?
What if userX was a paying member? Do you delete all his old invoices? How do you make sure that doing so still allows you to balance your books?
There are indeed real world scenarios wherein just deleting a user and cascading that delete throughout the system breaks things. In some cases, it might be better to replace userX's personal details with 'AnonymousUserX', but then that might leave behind content they've generated, which you then have to replace with "DELETED CONTENT" or some other stub, which causes complications.
My biggest _annoyance_ with GDPR and its advocates is the constant touting of "giving users control over their data" when in reality it is hindering voluntary actions that by their nature require some of "my data". If I want to service a small group of people with, say, an XMPP network, and those users are willing and eager to just go with it without any of this bs with terms and three-letter EU dictated roles, then…
So which parts of the GDPR do you actually disagree with in case of this XMPP service? Mostly you need to tell people what you collect, allow removing accounts and history, and tell them if you're sending the data to third-parties. If you're running a private service you most likely already fulfill those requirements. Where's the annoyance?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most early-stage startup use the best practice of “delete=1” Honestly that's a bad best practice if the data your collecting is sensitive, which PII is.
It's not so easy. Someone buys a book. Transaction is recorded, and now we know total book sales. Someone says "delete me and my purchases", so you do, and oops - total book sales are now wrong. There's ways around it, obviously. But they are not easy. Much easier to just mark as deleted. Another example: Threaded conversation - someone deletes their post, and oops all the replies are now orphaned.
If a user requests deletion, assign anyYassociated entities (eg purchases, conversations etc) to an anonymous user. Or, keep the original user record and just blank all of the fields. You've had two years to think about these problems.
My biggest _annoyance_ with GDPR and its advocates is the constant touting of "giving users control over their data" when in reality it is hindering voluntary actions that by their nature require some of "my data". If I want to service a small group of people with, say, an XMPP network, and those users are willing and eager to just go with it without any of this bs with terms and three-letter EU dictated roles, then…
It hinders nothing. It ensures that what you're with user data doing is truly voluntary and that your users really are 'willing and eager" about it beyond you pinky-swearing you'll be good with what you're given. Be annoyed all you want, the only people whining about the GDPR are those showing their true colors when it comes to user privacy and agency. If you're complaining that it hinders you from using user data as…
I'm going to ignore the part about my supposed true colors in respect to user privacy. Too tired.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most early-stage startup use the best practice of “delete=1” Honestly that's a bad best practice if the data your collecting is sensitive, which PII is.
It's not so easy. Someone buys a book. Transaction is recorded, and now we know total book sales. Someone says "delete me and my purchases", so you do, and oops - total book sales are now wrong. There's ways around it, obviously. But they are not easy. Much easier to just mark as deleted. Another example: Threaded conversation - someone deletes their post, and oops all the replies are now orphaned.
Erase the name and address fields from the user in the database. You don’t have to delete any line, and that person doesn’t have any personal info in your database anymore. Problem solved.