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Twitter is Being Investigated Over Data Collection In Its Link-Shortening System (theblogroom.com)
New submitter DavidDoherty writes: The Ireland Data Protection Commission is investigating Twitter because the company refused to provide their t.co (URL shortening service owned and used by Twitter) web link tracking data to UK professor, Michael Veale. "Their refusal to comply with the request is potentially a violation of the EU's allowance for requests under GDPR. The privacy expert said that Twitter refused to cite an exception to GDPR for requests that required 'disproportionate effort.'" By contrast, Veale believed that twitter was distorting the law in order to limit the information they handed over to the authorities. A new GDPR regulation, which was first enforced in May, requires that tech companies aim towards a more transparent relationship with user data and provide their customers with data privacy rights.
Or older phrase: "Aliis si licet, tibi non licet"
What small players will be mercilessly punished for, the big ones will call “disproportionate effort” and will be forgiven.
the links rot.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Let me spell it out for you.
Veale: All links in tweets get shortened to t.co URLs. When I click on one of these shortened URLs, what information are you obtaining from that? In particular, are you getting my device ID/location and if so, what are you doing with them?
Twitter: It's... uh... complicated. Sorry.
Data Protection Commission: That's not an answer to a legitimate question of general interest to anyone using your service. Since you don't care to provide a straight answer, we are going to obtain one ourselves.
Less confused now?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And that excuses not telling your users how they're paying for the "free" service exactly how?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Why don't you just stop using products and services from American companies if you don't like them so much rather than try and force your shit down everybody else's throat who lives in the EU or businesses operating from elsewhere? My company left Europe not because we wanted to but because of the increasingly asinine legal situation. The GDPR wasn't the issue so much as the number of different laws we couldn't reasonably comply without bankrupting the company. The GDPR was just the last straw that broke the camels back. We're not a mega international operation. We're a small family owned and operated business with less than a million in sales a year. Most of what you have done is force smaller companies out of Europe and made it harder to get niche products in that aren't otherwise available in Europe. It's creating trade barriers and putting Europeans at a severe disadvantage for a variety of reasons and products/services. Before we used to ship goods from the UK to the rest of Europe via a third party service largely because mainland Europe is such a socialist shit hole that they can't permit free market competition and hinder goods shipped from outside the EU from getting in without paying exhortant shipping fees via private carriers making us seem insanely expensive when we're actually cheaper (because where we are in the US we don't have as many shitty laws which increase the cost of doing business). While products cost twice as much in Europe they were at least competitive with what Europeans were expecting to pay. Now we ship from the US and because we have no competition in the niche market we service Europeans are FORCED to pay insane amounts for products that they can't get locally any more.
Europe isn't the only place that is seeing increased poverty through socialism. In the United States the prices are going up because of a recent supreme court ruling. Previously companies didn't have to collect sales taxes for states that they did not operate in. This might seem unreasonable until you understand the insanity of what this means. It's not like the EU's system where you collect a tax based on where you ship from and its pretty much always the same rate. In the US there are 10s of thousands of taxing jurisdictions and there is no way to correlate the tax rate, product (tax rate varies depending on product, dates, uses, etc), and end-user address. Even major corporations have failed where they only have one state to worry about due to the insanely complicated sales tax legislation. This is even in simpler states like NJ where a business has a fixed location and doesn't have to worry about a customers location that largely but not always have the same rate for most products and services and significantly less to worry about (given that they have one tax jurisdiction to worry about). But anyway- this is forcing prices upward. My company now charges an admin fee on top of a states general sales tax rate to account for the manual labor which will be required when we have to attempt to comply with each taxing jurisdiction that a customer orders from. We won't be able to collect the correct tax and won't even know if we have to collect a tax until the end of the year as it'll depend on the sales for that year and we won't know that until the end of the year! Christ- and there isn't any logical thing to do because you can't collect tax that isn't due so we have to collect a fee instead of a tax because we can't refund someone one tax not forwarded because the system isn't cable of handling that. Credit cards can only be refunded for 180 days or so.
I'd rather pay $50 for an item if that's 3% of my monthly net income, than $25 for an item if that means it's 5% of my monthly net income. I simply don't care for the actual prices of items. I only care for their prices in relation to my net income.
Because I'm not rich, living in a "socialist" country like the Netherlands is actually beneficial for me. Not because prices are lower (they're not), but because prices are lower relative to my net income. Oh, and because healthcare is significantly cheaper here than in the US. My health is more important than more money.
I was not really fond of GDPR when I have first heard about it, and sure I do not know it very well, but I already see positive effects. Multiple companies had to actually contact me and inform about their policies regarding my data. Companies that I did not really remember doing any business with, and for sure would not know what they know about me. An eye opener. I actually consider if I have to create an account, and what data do I have to share before doing any buisness. Even my employer had to change its internal policies and scrap some data/copied documents it had on me. I have started to appreciate being a European a bit more.
I'll pull up a parser site when I absolutely have to, but I feel like this is the sort of functionality that could be boiled into a browser mod. Something that asks a parser service where the shortener will try to resolve to, and neatly present the next URL in, say, a hover tooltip.
It could break if the shorteners ever mix things up or nest the bounces, but if the mod is being maintained then they easily have the whack-a-mole advantage.
I didn't find any when I looked, but I hope I'm just incompetent and you guys know some.