The author quotes a Spanish friend as saying. That Spaniard very well knows that under GDPR there are strong regulations for how companies have to treat this data. Data can be anonymized. It...
“Any request to an external system is going to register the content of the message and traces (aka metadata: time of the request, time zone, IP address, language, browser, you go down the list). Whether the system you’re reaching holds that information or not, it’s out of your control. You don’t know. You can’t know. And you’ll never know. The only thing you have is their “word”. In the digital society there’s no such thing as anonymous data.”
The author quotes a Spanish friend as saying.
That Spaniard very well knows that under GDPR there are strong regulations for how companies have to treat this data. Data can be anonymized. It regularly is, at least in the networking world where I work. Because that's the only way you know you can show your non-tech boards that there's no way the company could get a huge GDPR-fine: we have no data we can lose.
Either this privacy extremist doesn't know the current rules and regulations and the humongous fines that come with them, (I think this is very likely for most who advocate extreme privacy measure online) or they're willfully misrepresenting the data practices of all serious companies to do their agenda-pushing with.
Again and again, we’re focusing our attention on the wrong arguments. Whether we talk about anonymous data or not, we’re so easily influenced that we agree on whatever they say. We blindly ignore all the long tail of dangers.
This isn’t about our whim to keep our privacy (a legitimate whim).
This is so very right. This whole piece makes a labored and extreme argument to try to scare those silly people who don't go far enough in securing their privacy rights into finally taking their privacy seriously.
But a lot of people just tune out the exaggerations and extreme examples and analyses. There's no need to exaggerate privacy concerns.
By going too far, you lose potential people who sympathize with the need for new privacy regulations, controls and laws. You alienate the moderates. Privacy becomes this fringe movement we just automatically disregard.
Yeah, despite me generally agreeing with the author (OP) about the importance of privacy and general skepticism toward data anonymization (especially outside the EU), IMO this article really fails...
Yeah, despite me generally agreeing with the author (OP) about the importance of privacy and general skepticism toward data anonymization (especially outside the EU), IMO this article really fails to prove the bold claim in the headline and instead comes across as rather sparse on details and incredibly unfocused (e.g. the aside on Maslow's hierarchy).
The only "evidence" they provide to back up the rather definitive statement in the headline is the brief blurb about metadata collection you quoted which doesn't really prove anything since under the GDPR any information (including metadata) that is considered "personal data" (i.e. "any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person") is generally required to be anonymized or pseudo-anonymized depending on the situation (e.g. before being shared with third parties) and is also subject to Article 7's Right to erasure.
IMO, OP would have been better off focusing on discussing the shortcoming of data anonymization. They also could have talked about persistent cookies, which are data collection mechanisms that the vast majority of people don't even think about or pay nearly enough attention to, despite the fact most browsers offer a plethora of options for managing or outright blocking them. And another thing they also could have talked about is specific companies data retention/privacy policies and their shortcomings (E.g. Google's).
Yeah, the title is pretty important for setting the stage and something like "Why privacy is important and your trust in internet companies to respect yours is misplaced" or something to that...
Yeah, the title is pretty important for setting the stage and something like "Why privacy is important and your trust in internet companies to respect yours is misplaced" or something to that effect probably would have been better IMO. Making the title about data anonymization and then deviating so far from that midway through made it seem like your article was meandering and a bit disjointed (again just IMO).
The author quotes a Spanish friend as saying.
That Spaniard very well knows that under GDPR there are strong regulations for how companies have to treat this data. Data can be anonymized. It regularly is, at least in the networking world where I work. Because that's the only way you know you can show your non-tech boards that there's no way the company could get a huge GDPR-fine: we have no data we can lose.
Either this privacy extremist doesn't know the current rules and regulations and the humongous fines that come with them, (I think this is very likely for most who advocate extreme privacy measure online) or they're willfully misrepresenting the data practices of all serious companies to do their agenda-pushing with.
This is so very right. This whole piece makes a labored and extreme argument to try to scare those silly people who don't go far enough in securing their privacy rights into finally taking their privacy seriously.
But a lot of people just tune out the exaggerations and extreme examples and analyses. There's no need to exaggerate privacy concerns.
By going too far, you lose potential people who sympathize with the need for new privacy regulations, controls and laws. You alienate the moderates. Privacy becomes this fringe movement we just automatically disregard.
Yeah, despite me generally agreeing with the author (OP) about the importance of privacy and general skepticism toward data anonymization (especially outside the EU), IMO this article really fails to prove the bold claim in the headline and instead comes across as rather sparse on details and incredibly unfocused (e.g. the aside on Maslow's hierarchy).
The only "evidence" they provide to back up the rather definitive statement in the headline is the brief blurb about metadata collection you quoted which doesn't really prove anything since under the GDPR any information (including metadata) that is considered "personal data" (i.e. "any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person") is generally required to be anonymized or pseudo-anonymized depending on the situation (e.g. before being shared with third parties) and is also subject to Article 7's Right to erasure.
IMO, OP would have been better off focusing on discussing the shortcoming of data anonymization. They also could have talked about persistent cookies, which are data collection mechanisms that the vast majority of people don't even think about or pay nearly enough attention to, despite the fact most browsers offer a plethora of options for managing or outright blocking them. And another thing they also could have talked about is specific companies data retention/privacy policies and their shortcomings (E.g. Google's).
Yeah, the title is pretty important for setting the stage and something like "Why privacy is important and your trust in internet companies to respect yours is misplaced" or something to that effect probably would have been better IMO. Making the title about data anonymization and then deviating so far from that midway through made it seem like your article was meandering and a bit disjointed (again just IMO).