It's 2020 and american websites still go the "We'd rather block you alltogether than tell you what we do with your data" route.
Blocking the few European users is probably the right decision from an economic perspective.
Let's see just how much they like that.
(That was the sound of the joke going over your head)
Want to store logs? Now you need to make sure you're scrubbing any type of personal information from the logs. Want to use a third-party service? Now you need to make sure that you are using their GDPR-compliant plan, and that you are using their Amsterdam endpoints. Maybe you need to renegotiate your contract with them.
You can put the IP in your security logs because that is necessary to secure the service. Just have a routine to scrub the logs once they are too old to be useful anymore.
You can't put the IP in your shadow profile database and sell it to shady marketing companies, unless the user has explicitly agreed to that.
The question isn't only whether something is personal information or not, it is also a question of what you intend to do with the data.
Not exactly; it's up to the judges to decide whether IP addresses count as personal information as defined by the GDPR (in my opinion they're not, but I can see why one would think differently), so the flaw isn't as much inherent to the GDPR as to the fact that people just don't understand the internet.
While the wording of the Recital leaves some ambiguity as to whether an IP is automatically Personal Data under the GDPR, its specific call-out would make arguing that it is not difficult. This would particularly be the interpretation of American lawyers, who tend to assume that no connection is too tenuous to be held against their client by a shrewd prosecutor or regulator and will thus advise their client to treat all IPs in all situations as Personal Data.
So can Amazon/whoever if they saved the IP alongside other customer information.
But a naked ip->person lookup would require a warrant.
Have a look at the list of companies and other websites this service uses/shares data with.
No wonder some websites rather block users all together instead of showing that they are selling data left and right.
What?! I'm not allowed to store my users name, address and credit card number in my unencrypted syslogs anymore? HOW DARE THEY, THOSE DAMN BEUROCRATS!
Seriously though, while there are problems (like IP address being considered personal information, which they really aren't), the general idea is very positive. You shouldn't be able to store just any information of a person that only gave you this data for a specific purpose. Servers do get hacked, employees do abuse their access to systems and old hardware doesn't always get disposed of properly.
When I'm done using a service, I want my data gone from their servers ASAP, no buts.
Even then a non-EU company may not explicitly target a EU audience but EU moral or physical person may still find interest for whatever personal reason and still be protected by GDPR.
As for jurisdiction, I suppose such conflicts are resolved using international law, but if a company is reachable from the EU by individuals protected by EU laws I’m pretty sure there is applicable jurisdiction (not saying it’s an easy thing)
> 2. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: > (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or > (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.
This makes perfect sense from the perspective of some old politician: It's like shooting someone over the country border. It fails to address the fact that unlike in physical space, on the internet it's not that obvious to see where someone is connecting from (in fact, it's impossible to really say with complete accuracy)
But in my opinion, it's not the wrong choice to assume that, if you're operating on a scale where you can spy on your users and sell their data, you'd be capable of figuring out whether they're in the EU. And, honestly, it's not hard. There's third party software that you can just embed in your website and it automatically generates the cookie warning and even blocks cookies until you've accepted it.
I'd certainly never consider visiting normal US news sites unless - like in this case - they were linked to by HN or some other aggregator I do frequent.
Thus, it really makes no sense for them to comply with the GDPR.
Edit: Agreed... placating people with lies doesn't help.
If their are workaround for a paywalled site then its allowed on HN. So if their are workaround for the geoblocking (outline, google cache, archive.today, etc)then I think they should be allowed.
As for how you will know if a sit is blocked, the same way people find out about soft paywalls, the comments will tell you. Its not like a crime to post paywalled sites to HN.
It's covered by PECR. There's a good overview of the rules here: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/cookies-a...
The main change GDPR brought to it (as I understand it) is that it introduced stricter rules about how consent works. But even though GDPR doesn't specifically require cookie warning, it does require that you get informed consent from people before you store personally identifiable information about them; in many cases this effectively means getting their permission before using tracking cookies.
So tl/dr, it's primarily PECR that covers cookie handling, but GDPR also plays a role.
Also, if people are trained to just click them away, that's not really that bad, since tracking has to be opt-in, so if you click the banner away, you don't get tracked by default (that is, in theory; the reality is, many websites disregard this completely and have tracking cookies enabled by default)
So they are mandatory, since all websites NEED advertising revenue and analytics to function.
You can also run ad’s asking as you are not using targeted ad (which you are allowed to use if you ask for permission)
There are invasive ways of asking for such permission. Sites that do full take overs of the site or persistent bars that follow you around are just trying to annoy the user into clicking agree.
Why does the European Commission's website want to track me? They have a banner, too. In fact, I have yet to visit an EU government website that doesn't have a banner.
GDPR has the great idea that you shouldn't be tracked unless you consent. The popups are a way of forcing consent because users just click through them. However, the default should be that you're NOT tracked and opting in should be explicit, which possibly means all those popups that begin tracking you after one click are not compliant. Then I've also seen sites where opting out is difficult - there's a hard to find link that takes you to some settings page where you need a dozen clicks to disable tracking cookies. That's definitely not GDPR-compliant.
Despite the practical annoyances, I direct my frustration at the cancerous advertising industry that has turned the Web into a giant ad platform, and so the industry is very intentionally undermining GDPR protections.
If you are using tracking technology based on cookies or anything that collects information specific to a user, you will need to show the cookie banner and give an opt-in. Otherwise tracking/analytics is not allowed.
So... Every site you see this banner on has some dead bodies in their cellar and wants you to move on and not take a closer look. Just click "Accept all" and everything will be fine...
My 70 years old grandma or 12 years old cousin do though. Of course as tech people we know how to bypass most of the tracking happening on the web, that's not the case for the average user.
Really a great accomplishment by the EU... in addition to clicking a shitty "I accept cookies" banner on every damn website I visit, I now frequently also have to click another popup for GDPR and multiple checkboxes for GDPR when I signup somewhere. As if anyone ever bothered reading those.
As far as I'm concerned, it's all just a huge waste and the internet was better off before politicians got involved.
I bother reading those, and it's my fucking right to do so, as well as to stop using a service if I don't think it's worth the data they're taking as payment.
Arguing that I shouldn't have that right, because it bothers some people is like arguing against price tags because "they're annoying" and "Who looks at those before buying something anyway?".
And no, you don't click "I accept cookies", you click something along the lines of "I accept necessary cookies plus everything I've explicitly enabled", otherwise site is not GDPR compliant and you can just report them.
And if a foreign website wants to expand into the european market, then yes, no matter its country of origin, it will have to follow EU rules.
So, in conclusion, geoblocking the EU is just plain stupid.
Yes, there's nothing wrong with that. If you take money from EU citizens, then you can be expected to treat at least them in accordance with european standards. If you don't like it, then we don't want your busyness, as simple as that (even though that might not be the position of every citizen, it's essentially what GDPR states)