Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

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I (en_GB) lived in that weird place called West Germany for about 10 years on and off back in the 70s and 80s. We have many friends (Hi Wurms, int al) who also have family, friends and acquaintances that lived through those days directly, shall we say, and of course my own family members who did from another side and perspective. You may want to take another look at my username and make of that what you will.

My point really does stand. You might gradually allow erosion of your rights until you find that none are left. It is so easy to say "I have nothing to hide" until you find that actually you do have something to hide for reasons that are not immediately obvious.

I am not saying that using Zoom will have nasty consequences but I am saying that the attitude that abrogates responsibility for your own privacy might have unintended consequences. If it becomes common place to simply say "meh" we might not like the world we get instead of the world we might wish for.

My Old Saxon friends have a rather more robust attitude to privacy concerns than you mate!

I'm not going to play "guess what my username means" with you, sorry. I'm also not going to play "who knows more people that lived through the 3rd reich" with you.

Me administering a Zoom account for my fellow employees and my students does not erode anybodies right. For me it is a choice between a GDPR compliant vendor and a vendor that does not care about the GDPR. Personally I have had good experiences with the GDPR (Facebook finally having to delete my account even though I would not verify it with a personal ID and cell phone number after I went through the irish data protection authority) and Zoom claims to be GDPR compliant.

So, frankly I'm not sure what you are talking about. It seems like you are going for a slippery slope argument I don't agree with.

Zoom also claims to have end-to-end encryption and yet they don't, their marketing and even their clarification post being a lie.

Companies like Zoom can claim that they are GDPR compliant however truth of the matter is that compliance offices are overwhelmed. And until Zoom will have a huge data leak or something nobody is going to investigate their compliance.

So a company like Zoom might claim GDPR compliance and that's something, but only if you can trust them.

And a company that lies in their marketing and press releases can't be trusted, sorry.

Google's Meet btw is also GDPR compliant, Google tries to be GDPR compliant nowadays with everything they do because they are a huge target. They also don't use bullshit in their marketing and are pretty good at security, so I personally trust them more, even if I actively avoid Google's products out of privacy concerns.

Nitpick: he's not talking about the Drittes Reich, he clearly must be talking about the experience people had in eastern German DDR / "German people's republic".

Kids! How on earth would a Brit end up in the DDR? OK we did:

My dad was a British soldier (so was mum but that's another story). We were posted to exotic places like "Reindahln" (MG) and Paderborn and Soltau etc. We went on a holiday to West Berlin in around 1980ish. We were allowed through Check Point Charlie to see the DDR for a short while. Funnily enough exactly the same arrangement as getting into Northern Cyprus. ie the Turkish bit.

Anyway, we saw the Brandenburg Gate from both sides, when it was mined all around but rather nicely flood lit. I have to say the east side looked a bit shag back then.

Our German friends always used to look forwards to reunification but the cost when it came used to cause a few remarks cough. For me a unified Germany is a good and beneficial thing, regardless of cost. I saw first hand what life was like in E Berlin in the early 80s.

> and Zoom claims to be GDPR compliant.

That's the thing, though. Zoom also claimed to be end-to-end encrypting with AES-256. If they were willing to lie about that, what's not to say they're willing to lie about GDPR compliance?

Because one of those lies carries massive legal and financial penalties, and the other one doesn't?

> one of those lies carries massive legal and financial penalties

"It's only illegal if you get caught."

"Guess the username" (you didn't even try and it was pretty bloody obvious):

Gerdes (my family name) means the same as the word German. A ger is a spear - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period_spear. A ger-man is a spear bearing man and gerdes is an old form of that. You lot had a habit of trundling around with spears - hence the name in English.

Using Zoom is of course not an awful thing to do. Just be careful me old fruit. Please.

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