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Comment by 101404 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it is illegal under GDPR to include spying apps on phones without telling the user.

There was a joke that the fastest reader in the world is a Romanian who read 54 pages of terms and conditions in 2 seconds. So... yeah, most likely the user has "agreed".

I work in GDPR-compliance related area in a multibillion UE corporation and I can say that right now, it's all a big joke. We have multiple huge violations and we don't do anything about it (partially because the law is so demanding that implementing it would be a massive effort). And yet, we don't get fined - partially probably because no one blew the whistle yet. I'm pretty sure the situation is very similar in all of our competitors. It seems to me that the lawyers who wrote GDPR might have been out of touch with realities of large and old companies and now the preference on regulators side might not to just not enforce the more bonkers parts of the bill? Interesting how it will play out over the next 5-10 years.

It most certainly is.

The question of the GDPR is not whether it's illegal but whether anything is done to crack down on offenders. Facebook, Google and thousands of marketing/analytics/advertising companies are still around and are stalking users with total disregard of the GDPR, so that's a clear negative.

Would someone who is downvoting this be willing to explain why? Because I have the same impression (that many GDPR rules are simply being ignored because enforcement is lacking).

The typical response I get to such comments is that Google did get fined 50M once in France. The problem is that not only is it pocket money to them but Google continues to violate people's privacy (Google Analytics still tries to stalk me everywhere without asking for consent first).

When it comes to Facebook I am not aware of any investigation or enforcement action being taken despite them being even worse than Google when it comes to privacy and having proven their malicious intent and complete disregard for the privacy multiple times.

Well you can get rid of Google analytics, you just have to install their Opt-out Google Analytics browser extension and fill in some data. I really wish the EU actually did something worthwhile with the GDPR.

The point of the GDPR is that you don’t have to opt-out, you have to opt-in if you are happy with tracking.

It seems there has been more activity since then, see here https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Sort by amount fined.

It is, there is no doubt about that.

> I wonder if it is illegal under GDPR to include spying apps on phones without telling the user.

It is illegal but it is not enforced.

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