Show HN: Proposal for Internet-wide Unsubscribe and Privacy Settings
techendo.co
techendo.co
Aaaand we're done. They don't. Anyone can break the rule at any point.
If it was a service making those operations easier in any way - great. If it was making them more transparent - great. But if you're big enough to need to handle complex data storage cases, you probably don't want to send people to a 3rd party so they can change their preferences.
It's also a gold mine for people who hack accounts. Get one password, login to this service - get a complete list of services the user registered to. (and most likely to which the user set the same password)
Sorry - as a user, I'd probably like it, but I don't think it provides much, without a buy-in from a lot of service providers and some reason why they'd want to do it...
- "All personal information created or shared by me would have to be coupled with this unique id." - I disagree. Only the existence of an account would have to be. Not even a "reference" to the content mentioned later in solutions. Such service doesn't have to care if the user stores pictures on a service - just the access rights of potential pictures.
- "This allows central access for intelligence agencies to know what I'm doing online" - they already know. This is neither making it worse nor better. The problem is that it would make scamming much easier and any password leak much more dangerous.
- "This would have to be a really popular opt-in for companies to maintain, or it would have to be the law." - I have to disagree again about the first part. The law is not possible, anyway. (which country's law? who does it apply to? who would be able to enforce it?) It doesn't require being popular, it needs an incentive why anyone would want to integrate - i.e. what does the provider get from it. If they don't get anything, there will be no interest. Integrating such service is probably more costly than doing it in-house.
So summing it up... I think such service would be actually bad for almost everyone really. (especially if anyone gets an idea about regulating it with law) A browser extension that manages popular services however could be interesting (and doesn't require any central authority)
See https://www.privacyfix.com/start/install for example.