German court: 'Nein' to Apple 'global consent' on fanbois' privacy A German court has demanded that Apple change its rules on handling sensitive customer data. The Berlin Regional Court told Apple to change eight clauses in its privacy policy, after the fruity firm agreed to drop a further seven of them. These clauses include an end to "global consent" to use of customer data - which means …
EU laws are harmonised, this deals with data going outside of the EU.
The DPA (and other EEA country laws) set a minimum standard to allow the free passage of data, within the EEA (not just the EU).
Having said that certain types of info are more strongly protected in certain countries than others. The data here includes credit card numbers, so (theoretically) also falls under PCI-DSS, which makes DPA look like a walk in the park!!
Very apt. Annoying, wants to know what you're doing all the time, might go off and tell your parents things you don't want them to know.
Sadly, Channel 4 wasn't interested in my proposal for a programme to be called "Little Sister", in which Endemol executives and Big Brother presenters would be locked in a house with a lot of small girls who were allowed to pester them endlessly, until they promised never, ever to make exploitative programmes again.
Non, not only Apple.
But this specific case was about Apple. Because in Apples case their disregard for German laws could be easy enough proven by pointing to their terms of service or privacy policies.
I know that Google got into hot water because of their policies here in Germany more than once. And I'm sure they will again if there is enough proof for further misconduct.
What I find most remarkable is that Germany seems to be worried about this moreso than countries that supposedly value freedom, like the United States. Maybe the experience of having a dictator rise up and take absolute power within the living memory of some of its residents has something to do with that. I guess people in the US would probably have been more concerned about this if we'd only won independence from the British in WWII.
My phone doesn't run any of the mainstream OSes. If anything tries to read location data, it asks me whether to allow it. The browser isn't Chrome. So long as I don't install "apps" that do who knows what, I'm really not worried. I don't use things like Facebook or Twitter.
When my phone becomes more unusable than it already is (the browser isn't keeping up) I will almost certainly buy a BlackBerry. I'd rather be laughed at than tell a lot of Americans about everything I do. Not because I do anything I shouldn't, but because it is none of their fruit-flavoured San Francisco business.
You can use android if you strip the googley bits.
I'd like to have android and pay nokia for the maps, perhaps wrapped in my monthly fee.
Encrypt and mirror all my mail from home to a google imap or AWS and off we go.
For me, google is mostly about always on email and contacts, but I see no reason why AWS couldn't be convinced to run an imap server.
Seriously, the Germans are one of the few people in the world who have actually taken the time to LEARN from their previous mistakes. During the reign of the Nazis, and then with the actions of the Stazi, Germans have come to realise just how important personal privacy is, and they will go to almost any length to protect that. Its incredibly comforting to live here.
I just hope that other countries (Aus, UK, US) dont have to go through their own Stazi years before they learn that Privacy is important...
"I just hope that other countries (Aus, UK, US) dont have to go through their own Stazi years before they learn that Privacy is important..."
In US/UK your information is cash. Those breedy b*stards are not going got give that up. Fat f*ckers just want to get fatter. If that means selling yuor privacy, then thats what will happen.
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
Soon there will be a substantial breach of personal data from one of the big boys. Or one of the big boys will use masses of personal data for something that is widely regarded as a breach of privacy (immoral at least, if not technically illegal).
The media will go mental. The public will go mental.
The law will change.
Companies of all sizes will continue to write poor user agreements and will continue to slurp data without much thought - it is the culture we currently live in.
I work in IT for Financial Services - we (largely) consider security quite high on the list (2FA, encryption, tokenisation, RBAC, layers of security). I also work with Supermarkets. For them, security is more a one layer password type thing.
It's the culture. It will only change through experience. As a kid you learn not to touch hot things by burning yourself. Pray it's not your personal data that is the blister on the burns experienced by our current IT culture.
I made a complaint to our ICO that Apple slurps data and hands it over to Google - by default, and without (AFAICT) any notification let alone informed consent. That data includes *ANY* URL you ever type or edit - not just things you want to search for.
So we have a UK company, selling software (as part of a system) in the UK, to UK citizens, which slurps their data and exports it to (I assume) the USA where I assume it's used in ways I would prefer it not to be.
The ICO response ? After my re-iterating the "UK ... UK ... UK" elements twice ...
"Oh that's bad, we'll look into it" perhaps ? Dream on, this is a UK regulator here.
No, the answer was "The data is processed in the USA and we don't give a s**t". Yep, this is still the same regulator that thought Phorm was a pretty neat idea.
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