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Email Unsubscription Service Unroll.me To Close To EU Users Saying it Can't Comply With GDPR (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the good-riddance? dept.

Unroll.me, a company that has, for years, used the premise useful "email unsubscription" service to gain access to people's email inboxes in order to data-mine the contents for competitive intelligence -- and controversially flog the gleaned commercial insights to the likes of Uber -- is to stop serving users in Europe ahead of a new data protection enforcement regime incoming under GDPR, which applies from May 25. From a report: In a section on its website about the regional service shutdown, the company writes that "unfortunately we can no longer support users from the EU as of the 23rd of May," before asking whether a visitor lives in the EU or not. Clicking 'no' doesn't seem to do anything but clicking 'yes' brings up another info screen where Unroll.me writes that this is its "last month in the EU" -- because it says it will be unable to comply with "all GDPR requirements" (although it does not specify which portions of the regulation it cannot comply with).

5 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. One down... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One useless parasite down. That's a start.

    Go, GDPR!

    --
    No sig today...
  2. Big surprise? by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How can anyone be surprised that a company with full access to someone's email misuses the information they receive.

    Why is anyone still using the service after they got caught lying?

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    1. Re:Big surprise? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People do care about lying. But what choice did we have when the other candidate was an even BIGGER liar?

  3. False advertising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Pretending to be a service for unsubscibing, while actually being a data-mining company...

    You do realize that false advertising has always been illegal in the EU? Perhaps the real problem is that the fines for false advertising is too low, and the GDPR fines are large enough that companies care about them.

  4. By can't, they mean don't want to by Mascot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    access to people's email inboxes in order to data-mine the contents for competitive intelligence -- and controversially flog the gleaned commercial insights to the likes of Uber

    It's almost as if that's exactly the sort of undisclosed behavior the GDPR is designed to combat...

    Granted, I suppose my subject is a bit unfair. If violating privacy is your primary business model, I guess "can't" is technically accurate.