From tomorrow on all Europeans and their data shall benefit from the new General Data Protection Regulation. This puts a lot of Internet services currently in need to update their data and privacy regulations, to inform their customers about it and re-ask for their agreement on the new regulations. In my opinion this should be done every other year, because it sheds an interesting light on some of the companies pretending to do “business as usual”.
To pick one, if you visit yahoo.com (now part of the Oath family) in these days from within Europe you are asked to agree to the updated privacy policies and to receive personalized adds delivered to you with the help of “trusted partners”. “Trusted partners” out of which each one of them comes with their own privacy policy again. Means, that if you agree to Yahoo, then you also agree to the terms of these “trusted partners” except you explicitly reject from doing.
If you then have a closer look who are these “trusted partners”, you will see two lists. One is the list of “trusted partners” who have signed the GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework. These are already 48 companies! Each one of them of course again comes with their own privacy policies. Means, by clicking ok you have already signed 49 different privacy policies, approximately written on more than a thousand pages.
Then, even worse, in the second list you find “additional partners” who have NOT signed the GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework but who have “mutual agreements” with Yahoo to “protect your data” … these “additional partners” are 273 companies!
273 individual companies with whom your data will or might be shared with and that have not signed the GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework. 273 companies with each one of them individual privacy policies, written on thousands and thousands of pages with none of them necessarily having to be in line with the new GDPR regulations.
In sum, by clicking ok to Yahoo now, you immediately have 321 “trusted partners” and their individual privacy policies that you share your online life with.
Unfortunately, Yahoo is just the tip of an Iceberg and similar arrangements are true for countless companies out there.
Well then. Thank you for nothing.
Attachments:
List 1: Trusted partners
List 2: Additional partners