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Comment by dvdkhlng | Hacker News Reader

In germany we have the words "Datensparsamkeit" (data parsimony) and "Datenvermeidung" (data prevention) [1]. Which wikipedia merely translates as "Privacy by design" [2].

DDG is unneccessaryly producing (aggregating), transmitting (and collecting?) very sensitive user data here, which is just the opposite of data protection. I can't even understand why they try to justify their actions. It's like omitting the seat-belt in a car, then telling customers that this was required to make the in-car entertainment system more usable.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenvermeidung_und_Datenspars...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design

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In fact I think what they do here is illegal by GDPR. It does not matter that they say they do not collect the information, it is enough it is unnecessarily sent to their servers to make the whole function illegal.

The transmission of ip address alone, which is necessary for the TCP request to happen, deanonymizes the request enough to not be considered anonymous within the GDPR framework.

GDPR Article 5 (1) c: "Personal data shall be ... adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed (‘data minimisation’);" - this is the "Datensparsamkeit" you mentioned.

Exceptions from Article 7 do not apply: The user has to give wilfully give informed consent, which he cannot do as the privacy policy of the browser omits the information that all visited domains are transmitted to DDG servers.

GDPR Recital 30 "Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags."

Oh, and the fact I'm downvoted for a purely informational comment additionally does not shine a good light on DDG.

Yes it does not look very GDPR conformant. They may try to argue that the transmission of visited domain names serves a purpose (browser performance) and that the user agreed to that transmission by accepting the TOS etc. However, I think they may be in trouble as consent for data processing under GDPR needs to be given "freely" [1]:

"When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, [..] the performance of a contract[..] is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract."

As DDG's favicon-hack is not strictly neccessary for operating the DDG-browser, DDG would need to give users the option to opt-out of the favicon-retrieval, otherwise they may have "forced" the users to consent to the data processing, thereby voiding that consent as far as the GDPR is concerned.

[1] https://gdpr.eu/gdpr-consent-requirements/

You are completely right about the not "freely given" aspect. But well, it already breaks down at the "informed" aspect.

Their appstore pages link to the generic privacy policy of the company instead of for the browser specifically. This alone will usually already NOT be accepted by the supervisory authorities at least in Germany - the Landesdatenschutzaufsichten usually require a product specific privacy policy being linked for it being valid (personal experience), or at least making clear in the general policy what applies to the product, what not. And as mentioned, the fact visited domains are sent to the DDG servers (also outside the European Union) was not mentioned at all in that policy when I looked some minutes ago.

> DDG would need to give users the option to opt-out of the favicon-retrieval,

Wouldn't they need to give users the option to opt-in, under GDPR?

I think you are being downvoted because your interpretation of GDPR is extremely broad and people disagree with that. I also don't think it's in line with the way it is being applied in practice. Nothing to do with DDG.

I guess I might be one of the few people here who actually have been regulated under the GDPR by a supervising authority.

When that happens, you have to do insanely stupid seeming stuff like explaining in your privacy policy even, why your application, which is clearly for accessing a webservice, actually needs the Android permission to access the internet at all, true story. So I am pretty sure, an app sending visited domains to a central server outside the EU without even a mention of that fact in the privacy policy will cause problems with them, should they ever check the app. Of course, other countries might handle this differently, as Ireland shows.

So whoever thinks my interpretation is overly broad should first have the decency to step forward and actually explain why, instead of hammering a button and second, talk to me again after he had a meeting with the responsible authority and listen to THEIR interpretation of the GDPR ;-)

People should not mistake my interpretation with endorsement of the overly broad text of the GDPR itself.

Wait what? a TCP request already breaks the GDPR rules? Didn't know that...

Any human readable ways of dealing with that?

That's not what the parent said. The TCP request includes info that deanonimizes the request.

Or put another way, a TCP request sent by your app from my computer can not be considered anonymous.

If it is an unnecessary request to another service, yes.

IP-adddresses are considered personally identifying information. TCP requests transmit IP addresses.

Under the strict interpretation of the GDPR, a lot of things which are common outside the EU might be illegal, like e.g. embedding Google Fonts. To be on the safe side, people usually at least list these external dependencies in their privacy policies to construct some kind of "consent", but till we have more actual court rulings, this is a huge problem area.

For the problem at hand, it is pretty clearly illegal, as it's not only an ip address transmitted, it is a combination of ip address plus visited unrelated domain. This allows the creation of profiles. It does not matter for the GDPR, if the profile is ACTUALLY created, the pure possibility of creating it any time is enough to be a problem.

I don't think this is an accurate way to analyze GDPR compliance. As the staffer points out this favicon service follows their own privacy policy, if by this policy they keep (or analyze, sell, distribute, etc.) no data on your use of the service then there is nothing of interest for the GDPR.

They might have to prove that their privacy policy is indeed GDPR conformant and that their service works as advertised, but in practice this is likely more about public trust that legality.

It's not as simple as that.

Art. 4 GDPR (1) clearly makes the (ip-address, visited domain) tuple personal data Art. 4 GDPR (2) defines "processing" data, and the pure "collecting" of data, even if immediately thrown away, is usually already considered "processing", therefore the GDPR applies.

If you are doubting this, just for a moment imagine, instead of the visited domain they would have sent all form data, including for example credit card data, you entered somewhere on a third party webpage to their central server and did not mention the fact in their privacy policy.

Do you really think then there is "nothing of interest for the GDPR" just because they do not actually permanently record that information? It would clearly be a violation. But to the GDPR, the importance of that data is equal. In fact, the domainnames might actually be more important to the law, as article 9 establishes event stricter rules for "sensitive" data about e.g. health or sex life of a person, and the domainnames might just leak that information.

> Wait what? a TCP request already breaks the GDPR rules?

If the TCP request carries personal data like the name of a visited website plus the user's IP address, then it "breaks the GDPR rules" in so far as you now have to fullfil your GDPR transparency/consent etc. duties /before/ sending that request.

Maybe not all website names look like sensitive data to you, but some website visits you surely want to be treated as sensitive, personal data (like names of hospitals, doctors, political parties, religion etc.).

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