{"id":9943,"date":"2018-12-16T16:58:02","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T00:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=9943"},"modified":"2021-08-03T08:47:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T15:47:20","slug":"if-your-privacy-is-the-hands-of-others-alone-you-dont-have-any","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/if-your-privacy-is-the-hands-of-others-alone-you-dont-have-any\/","title":{"rendered":"If your privacy is the hands of others alone, you don’t have any"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you think regulations are going to protect your privacy, you\u2019re wrong. In fact they can\u00a0make things worse<\/em>, especially if they start with the assumption that you have no privacy besides what you get from other parties.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A for how much worse things can get is the\u00a0 E.U.\u2019s\u00a0GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)<\/a>. Soon as the GDPR went into full effect last May, damn near every corporate entity on the Web put up a \u201ccookie notice\u201d requiring acceptance of terms and privacy policies that allow them to continue with business as usual, harvesting and sharing your personal data, and data about you.<\/p>\n

For websites and services in that harvesting business (a population that includes approximately the entire commercial Web), these notices provide a one-click way to adhere to the letter of the GDPR while violating its spirit.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also big business in the friction that produces. To see how big,\u00a0look up GDPR+compliance<\/em> on Google<\/a>. You\u2019ll get 190 million results (give or take a few dozen million.)<\/p>\n

None of those results are for you, even though you are who the GDPR is supposed to protect. See, to the GDPR you are a mere \u201cdata subject\u201d and not an independent and fully functional participant in the technical, social and economic ecosystem the Internet supports by design.<\/p>\n

Or at least that\u2019s the interpretation that nearly every lawmaker, regulatory bureaucrat, lawyer and service provider goes by. Same for those selling GDPR compliance services, and who account for most of those 190 million results.<\/p>\n

The clients of those services include nearly every website and service on Earth that harvests personal data. These entities have no economic incentive to stop harvesting, sharing and selling personal data the usual ways, beyond fear that the GDPR might actually be enforced, which so far (with very few exceptions) it hasn\u2019t been. So it is easy for those sites and services to put up those notices on their websites.<\/p>\n

Worse, for you to actively \u201cmanage\u201d your exposure to data harvesters at each website requires entering a morass of impossibilities.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s explore just one of those, and then get down to what it means and why it matters. If you wish to skip down to conclusions, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Start by opening a browser to\u00a0https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk<\/a>. If you haven\u2019t clicked on that site already, you\u2019ll see a cookie notice that says,<\/p>\n

We use cookies to help our site work, to understand how it is used, and to tailor the adverts presented on our site. By clicking \u201cAccept\u201d below, you agree to us doing so. You can read more in our cookie notice. Or, if you do not agree, you can click Manage below to access other choices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They don\u2019t mention that \u201ctailor the adverts\u201d really means We open your browser to infestation by tracking beacons from countless parties in the online advertising business, plus who-knows-what-else might be working with those parties (because there is no way to tell), so those parties and their \u2018partners\u2019 can use those beacons to follow you like a marked animal everywhere and report your activities back to a vast marketplace where personal data about you is shared, bought and sold, much of it in real time, supposedly so your eyeballs can be hit with \u2018relevant\u2019 or \u2018interest based\u2019 advertising, though we are sure there are other collateral effects, but we don\u2019t care about those because it\u2019s our business to get paid just just for clicks or \u2018impressions,\u2019 whether you\u2019re impressed or not.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay, so now click on the \u201cManage\u201d button.<\/p>\n

Up will pop a rectangle where it says Here you can control cookies, including those for advertising, using the buttons below. Even if you turn\u00a0off the advertising related cookies, you will still see adverts on our site, because they help us to fund it.\u00a0However, those adverts will simply be less relevant to to you. You can learn more about cookies in our\u00a0Cookie Notice on the site<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Under that text, in the left column, are six \u201cPurposes of data collection,\u201d all defaulted with little check marks to ON (though only five of them show, giving the impression that there are only those five). The right column is called \u201cOur partners,\u201d and shows the first five of what turn out to be 259 companies, nearly all of which are not brands known to the world, or to anybody outside the business (and probably not known widely\u00a0within<\/em>\u00a0the business as well). All are marked ON by that little check mark. Here\u2019s that list, just through the letter A:<\/p>\n