Slashdot Mirror
Upcoming EU Data Law Will Make Europe Tricky For Social Networks
Thorfinn.au writes "EU politicians are mulling new data protection laws that could make Europe a hostile place for social networks. The EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding and the German Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner drew up proposals for the new data protection law which reads: 'EU law should require that consumers give their explicit consent before their data are used. And consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the internet themselves. We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market. This also applies to social networks with users in the EU.'"
I have never used Facebook, never signed in to their service, never clicked on a button to like anything but still they seem to have created a profile for me and started to spam trying to force me to sign in. I tracked down the data to the (IMHO illegal) scan of address books of friends of mine who weren't aware that Facebook were to use this data to build profiles for people who don't use their service and then would start a spam regime to try to get those to sign in. If I were to pursue this issue currently I could only go after my friends but that would only reduce my real life social network not the phoney online community to which I have no ties whatsoever and to which I never ever want to have any ties in the future. If the new european law would be passed I could go after Facebook and finally get rid of this annoying garbage they send me every few weeks about what I am missing and who is missing me (the latter I know isn't true because I have regular real life contact with my friends) and who is playing which game now... For me they could make FB and other data hogging social networks illegal and block traffic from their servers throughout Europe, most people would be far better off without them...