1,741 "informed" consents with one click? GDPR complaint filed
noyb.eu
noyb.eu
> Improving Your Experience and Protecting Your Privacy on Samsung TV Plus
> Samsung and our 264 partners use information about you and your device in order to provide, analyse and improve the Samsung TV Plus app. This includes the processing of personal data such as unique IDs for personalised advertising.
But to stay on topic: never! connect your tv to the internet. My LG has been offline for around 5 years now after automatically installing unwanted apps. Since then, I run everything via an Apple TV 4K which works way better than LGs own software does anyway.
- deny is the default: one button to deny everything but one accept button for every partner
- respect DO NOT TRACK, and force software/hardware providers to enable it by default
- making payments for non-tracking illegal
- remove or rephrase "legitimate interest" ruling, because providers use that as an excuse to enable everything
- and probably: prohibit any other dark pattern, or at least make it extremely hard to implement
Yes, that's in the law. I you do not click on consent, the default is deny everything, and a button to refuse everything should be easy to access.
> - making payments for non-tracking illegal
In the law too.
> - remove or rephrase "legitimate interest" ruling, because providers use that as an excuse to enable everything
True, this loophole was introduced by UK/US lobbyists at the time if I remember correctly. My (very small, 3 dev) company at the time worked on health data and managed to find itself in the arcanes of Brussels because anything related to PII security was good news for us.
- and probably: prohibit any other dark pattern, or at least make it extremely hard to implement
This is the courts who can judge that.
The main issue with the gdpr law is local enforcement. It is honestly well written and easy to understand, which is why you have so much legal loopholes, but EU courts are RAI rather than RAW (our fast americanisation is changing that though).
Part of the problem with this is the website operators who maliciously interpret this to mean "also refuse the cookie that says what I selected", so you have to select it every time you visit. (I even hit a site a few weeks ago that required it on every page when I refused.)
This keeps surfacing in discussions about tracking. I'm wondering how do you propose for b2c software companies to make money if they can't either properly advertise or require you to pay to opt-out? Is this just an entitled leftie thing ("Elon Musk should pay for my Instagram!") or is there a genuine though-out plan for another reasonable business model?
Advertising does not require invasive and pervasive tracking. There's no world in which a b2c company needs my precise geo location for 12 years: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541
Why the hell are people defending 24/7 monitoring at scale that would make even Stasi or Stalin pause and think "are we going too far?"? 1984 wasn't an instruction manual.
Why are you so opposed to pay for a tier without tracking? I'm still not following.
> Why the hell are people defending 24/7 monitoring at scale that would make even Stasi or Stalin pause and think "are we going too far?"? 1984 wasn't an instruction manual.
Stasi or KGB weren't "opt in" for their citizens while social networks definitely are. For example, Twitter won't allow me to access the images in the post you linked because I deleted my account as soon as Musk completely enshittified it and I'm doing just fine without it.
Because advertising does not require invasive and pervasive tracking.
The better question is: why are you so happy defending 24/7 surveillance of everything you do?
> Stasi or KGB weren't "opt in" for their citizens
What you're proposing isn't opt in either. You're proposing "pervasive and invasive tracking, or pay an arbitrary sum randomly defined by the tracking industry". That is, literally pay for access to internet without tracking, or else. All based on a completely unproven assumption that tracking is required for ads to function. It's not.
> while social networks definitely are.
Indeed. Because tracking is happening only on social networks.
> For example, Twitter won't allow me to access the images
Here's a direct link. And no, this pop up wasn't on an "opt out social network". It was on a random site (can't remember now which one): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GTe23o5WwAACyNJ?format=png&name=...
Okay, so just ignore tracking-advertisement supported option and sign up for payed account. What is your issue with this again?
> What you're proposing isn't opt in either. You're proposing "pervasive and invasive tracking, or pay an arbitrary sum randomly defined by the tracking industry". That is, literally pay for access to internet without tracking, or else.
This is incorrect. GDPR already forbids tracking without consent, so services you didn't sign up for (the whole internet) can't legally track you. Obviously, then everything would cost you actual money not just social networks.
> Here's a direct link. And no, this pop up wasn't on an "opt out social network". It was on a random site (can't remember now which one): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GTe23o5WwAACyNJ?format=png&name=...
This has nothing to do with the topic of this thread. GDPR already forbids random sites and ad networks from tracking you without your explicit consent.
Somehow the only option you propose and defend is: "pay, or be tracked".
Why would I want a world where the only way not to be tracked is to pay?
Moreover, your whole premise is based on the completely unsubstantiated claim that tracking is required for advertisment and for the poor hapless b2c companies.
> This has nothing to do with the topic of this thread. GDPR already forbids random sites and ad networks from tracking you without your explicit consent.
You're literally saying that in your vision you are either tracked, or have to pay for access.
Which is 90% of modern internet
> I still don't get why you expect to dictate to businesses how to price their products
I still don't understand why you keep defending pervasive and invasive tracking of everything you do 24/7 across every site, and device, and service you visit or use even in passing.
> voting with your wallet has always been the way to express your disagreement
No. It has rarely worked. Especially in the face of supranational corporations, and thousands of data brokers.
I mean, the top comment to the news is this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49106733 about a TV that the person already buys with their money, and that still tracks and sells their data to over 200 "partners". And every TV you can buy at the store these days does that. How can I "vote with my wallet"?
Or do you think fifa.com (referenced in the article under which we discuss this) needs money to run their site? FIFA has a revenue of $15 billion dollars from the World Cup alone: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/18/fifa-record... And yet: https://www.fifa.com/ads.txt
> EU mAkE eViL Zuck serVE mE fOr fRee!!!11
Literally no one is saying that. You are the only one pretending that invasive and pervasive tracking is the only way to serve ads or sponsor content and sites.
So, tell me, why is it you are defending tracking so much?
At least ever since Musk syphoned billions of dollars from the government, then illegally intervened in elections at home and abroad, then went on to destroy USAID, then went after pension funds I believe it would be just fair if he was made to pay personally for some expenses of private people, yes. You don't have to be particularly left to find that.
Article 6 and 7 of the GDPR
> respect DO NOT TRACK, and force software/hardware providers to enable it by default
There is other software and other areas of human activity than just cookies and browsers.
Also, with "deny is default" you shouldn't really nead the DNT. But tell that to the ad/tracking industry
> making payments for non-tracking illegal
Generally derived from GDPR. See e.g. recital 43 https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/
> remove or rephrase "legitimate interest" ruling, because providers use that as an excuse to enable everything
It's there because actual legitimate activities like security audits or fraud detection would not be possible.
EU expects companies to act as adults, but here we are.
> prohibit any other dark pattern, or at least make it extremely hard to implement
This cannot be properly specified. And existing laws and regulations already cover that.
See the article we're commenting under. And noyb's previous cases: https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come
What happens if you say no?
Cutting them off the wire and view through another dongle is easier though
Or maybe an extra smart remote.
Most of EU laws are "these are sensible defaults and we expect you to behave like adults". As we've seen, digital services are anything but.
Or, if reforms do pass, they get reversed the next time the counter-party gains enough power in Congress to roll back the progress.
They're not even pretending anymore and are just trying everything they can't get consent for again via the "legitimate interest" route.
I was actually wondering if the mandated "refuse everything" button that revokes my consent in bulk (and then conveniently closes the window) also implies I objected to all "legitimate interest" claims, or if that is another malicious compliance trick...
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[0] https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-report-how-companies-make-you...
[1] https://noyb.eu/en/project/forced-consent-dpas-austria-belgi...
Would love to see a society where ads are not allowed. Cannot really see any downsides personally, but I’m sure many will claim ”how will companies survive?!” Hard to see it would lead to the collapse of either companies or society, but maybe of capitalism as we know it (which I think given the current state of the world would be such a bad thing).
They are not actually connected to disabling analytics, just connected to the banner itself.
It seems like no data privacy activists or automated scans actually look at whether the consents really work or not, just whether they have them!
For most companies this can easily be thousands of partners, and going through that list and figuring out exactly who might get data in reality, through every possible permutation of workflow, is a horrendously expensive proposition.
You might be surprised how many well-meaning regulations leave even the best-intentioned implementers in an impossible situation.
And once again we shall see how being conservative sounds like it might save you money but costs you dearly in the long run.
Ultimately that is what they are having to do though, it's just costing them twice as much by pretending that being conservative and not actually looking at the problem saved them.
analytics: A/B testing, "if x does user click y"?, unique page visits, etc.
ads: integrating with an ad provider comes with hundreds of trackers, because they want to - know if you bought a product after clicking on an ad - show you targeted ads for shoes after you googled shoes - build a profile of you (age, gender, location, profession) to show relevant ads across different websites
You can usually check the ads.txt file on a website to see which companies are allowed to bid for ad space on there. For example, for dict.cc, the website in question:
The ones labelled "RESELLER" will probably share your data with even more ad companies.
It generally goes like this:
When we launch a site it is seldom more than perhaps Hotjar, Google Analytics, and two-three other services connected.
And then through the years product managers and other stakeholders gets sold on adding LinkedIn, Instagram, Meta, and so on. So we add those.
Next a specific service ”to better track the sales funnel from in-store salespeople to the web” gets added. Then another ”analyse the data quality versus bounce rate” tracker gets added. And so on.
Before long the developers have streamlined the process of adding new scripts/analytics/trackers that editors can add them on their own, and that is when the floodgates open.
At least that is how I understood it
If I understand it correctly giving informed consent for over 1700 tracking partners of a single page isn't realistic. You as a single person cannot be expected to truly understand what it is you are agreeing to when you click accept.
As such the conditions for data sharing are not met and it is likely to be illegal.
Then it is basically impossible to consent to any kind of tracking, because users cannot become informed for any number of 3rd parties -- even a single one.
Presumably, if your service was important enough to the user and the third party tracking integration important enough to you that you're willing to ask the user to spend a few hours reviewing their 'contract' with the third party, then such a thing could be done. I imagine a lot of people would click the “I’m not reading all that” button though.
You could even envision a simplified sort of 'tracking declaration' as is done with (for example) insurance products here in Australia, where a sort of statutory precis gives the reader a good, bullet-pointed outline of the policy
I would wager that with a well formatted precis like that, it may even be possible to consent to as many as half a dozen 3rd parties. I doubt many people would though, if it was spelled out that blatantly and clearly what it's all about.
And isn't that the point? Hide what's really happening in so many walls of text nobody could ever conceivably bother with them?
So I think the person filing this suit is correct. The behaviour on show here is an end-run around even the idea of informed consent, and needs to be squashed.
(Edit - instead of all these cold GDPR compliance boxes and walls of text, sites should be honest: letting advertisers track you is how we make money, please click yes and we can get paid for your visit”, but of course it’s much more effective just to confuse people into ignorant acquiescence, or try to get people riled up about “stupid gdpr compliance nonsense”)
I've now bought two apartments and sold one. The whole process including reading the contract almost in its entirety out loud for both parties, and signing by the parties, and confirmation of the bank took less than an hour.
There's almost no service important enough to spend a few hours reading through a contract. And those that are? They should not have contracts of that length.
> letting advertisers track you is how we make money, please click yes and we can get paid for your visit”
Ads don't require pervasive and invasive tracking. No one needs to store my precise geolocation for 12 years to serve me an ad: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GTe23o5WwAACyNJ.png?name=orig
The designers of GDPR would have not expected thousands of partners sharing the data collected in a single click. The next review of the legislation would probably pick it up.
The designers of GDPR (and most other EU regulations) expect businesses to behave like adults, not like petulant children.
We'll now see if "thousands of partners" is considered as a good match for "informed consent". Doesn't mean there is a need for review, unless the legislator is not happy with the interpretation that will be provided.
When you say no there's a huge list of partners you have to disable one by one, it's probably 15 minutes of work to go through them all.
I can't think of an example app right now, but usually it's on first install or something like that. Not sure GDPR applies to apps though.
GDPR applies to we the people and the organizations who hold our data. Doesn't matter if it's morse code on paper strips.
If we can dictate warnings on tobacco packages, we can dictate the wording on consent banners to not be "We care about your privacy" but instead "We want to track you for profit".
At least the banners that say "we value your privacy" are honest about it
The G stands for General, and the EU means it.
10 years. It's been in force for 10 years. The tracking/ad industry has really managed to brainwash everyone into thinking it's about cookies (even though GDPR doesn't even mention cookies except as an example of tracking)
Having personal information isn't always a bad thing, it would be really annoying if I had to fill out a form with my bank every couple of years to tell them my address, which hasn't changed and is a legitimate interest. Amazon telling everyone that I bought some athletes foot cream is not.