Can service providers like Google and Facebook deny service to users who don&#39;t accept their privacy policy? Service providers like Google and Facebook are pretty much part of people's lives. Like how the law has provisions for 'well known brands' (eg. generic trademarks and common carriers), does the law have provisions for 'well known service providers' when it comes to privacy terms? What is the point of privacy laws if a dominant service provider like Google/Facebook can simply deny service if one does not want to accept its data collection policy? They can also change their policy from time to time. This question is general, I do not want to restrict this to any jurisdiction. But if a jurisdiction is asked, can the answer be confined to the EU? Data protection laws are most stringent there.
The point of privacy laws is to set basic standards that apply to everyone, whether or not they have a privacy policy. A privacy policy that is inconsistent with privacy laws cannot be enforced. Breaches of privacy law can be punished even if the conduct is permitted by a privacy policy. Article 7 of the GDPR illustrates this by making special provision for the nature of &quot;consent&quot; to the processing of personal data. Consent must be freely given, and a &quot;written declaration&quot; as to consent, like the acceptance of a privacy policy, &quot;shall not be binding&quot; to the extent that it infringes the GDPR. The $5 billion penalty obtained by the FTC in United States v. Facebook, Inc (19-cv-2184) demonstrates that privacy laws can have a practical impact when a service provider &quot;subvert[s] users’ privacy choices to serve its own business interests.&quot; Facebook was penalised even though its users agreed to Facebook sharing &quot;information about the App User and the App User’s Facebook Friends&quot; with third-party developers. Whether a service provider has breached privacy law is a complex, fact-specific question, but if the service is &quot;pretty much part of people's lives,&quot; that will generally affect both the application of privacy law and the likelihood of an investigation by the regulators.
The GDPR does not outlaw such processing of personal data. It merely regulates how and for what purposes you can process personal data. In general, you can conduct any processing activity as long as it has a clear purpose and a legal basis. Here, the purpose would likely be something like “conducting business with my clients” and the legal basis would be a “legitimate interest”. A legitimate interest always requires a balancing test that weighs your interests against the interests and rights of the affected persons. For example, can the affected persons reasonably expect such processing activities? In a professional setting, it can probably expected that business partners keep notes about contact persons so your intended processing could be fine. The GDPR does impose some general constraints. There are general principles like data minimization and storage limitation – you should only collect data that is necessary for your purpose, and shouldn't store it for longer than necessary. You should think about appropriate technical and organizational measures (TOMs) to protect the processing activity, for example about how your CRM is hosted, how backups are made and how security updates are installed, who has access to the personal data, and how the people with access to the personal data can be trained. For example, such training might inform your employees that they can only use the data in the CRM for business purposes, but absolutely not for personal purposes like asking Gina from reception out for a date.
I'm pretty sure that under GDPR, you can indeed request them to send all data they have on you. If it's a complex request, they may charge you something like £10. If they have a lot of data on you, they may list the categories of data they have and ask you to pick one, rather than them having to collect and send everything. They should respond within one month, but iirc in the UK implementation, they can inform you (within that month) that they will respond within three months instead. For the rest, I only know current Dutch law. GDPR is not that different from what we already had (in general terms) and in many cases it even extends it. Under our law (WBP), you can also request a correction of the data in case it is incorrect, or deletion if they no longer need it for the purpose for which it was collected and stored. I don't really know how that works out in practice though, as Facebook can of course claim that "being able to connect you to your friends when you sign up for WhatsApp or Facebook with that number" is a legitimate purpose (in their eyes). They might also not have your full name and therefore not be able to connect your data to your request. Or, perhaps, they have only your full name (and there are probably more people with your name), so they'll have a hard time verifying that it's really your data which they would be handing over or deleting. The company is required to verify your identity before acting on your request. How they implement that is up to them. Under Dutch law, if I remember correctly, any data that can be connected to your person by any party is personally identifiable information (PII). While Facebook might not be able to find who's behind a phone number, your carrier most certainly can. Therefore, the data falls under PII protection laws and they will have to implement a way to verify you and get you your data. Finally, whether your local laws apply to Facebook, I don't know exactly. There's lots of information on this though, so you should be able to find it. Generally, countries say that if something happened within their territory (e.g. you signed up for WhatsApp while in the UK), their law applies. Companies, I've read, will instead try to claim that their main office is in SomeCountry and therefore SomeCountry's laws apply. But I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find a Facebook office somewhere where GDPR applies, so that's probably fine. While not an exact answer and while I am not sure about everything, I hope this gave you some pointers to go on!
Art. 17 GDPR Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’) The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay where one of the following grounds applies: Assuming private messages contain personal data, if at least one of the following points (a..f) applies, it would have to be deleted. (a) the personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed; The original main purpose was probably Article 6(1)(b) (performance of a contract). If you delete your account, that would no longer apply. However, for the receiver of the private message, Article 6(1)(f) (legitimate interests pursued by a third party) would apply. The receiver might still want to read that message. So there is still a purpose to process this data. So point (a) does not apply. (Note that a Facebook private message can be considered a hosted version of SMS messages. A receiver does not expect SMS messages to be automatically deleted after they have reached the recipient's device. A receiver expects full control of the storage of SMS messages. I think a receiver expects the same for messages on facebook.) (b) the data subject withdraws consent on which the processing is based according to point (a) of Article 6(1), or point (a) of Article 9(2), and where there is no other legal ground for the processing; Data processing was not based on consent, so point (b) does not apply. (c) the data subject objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(1) and there are no overriding legitimate grounds for the processing, or the data subject objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(2); Article 21(1) allows you to object to processing based on Article 6(1)(f), unless there are compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the data subject. While I think processing is based on Article 6(1)(f), I also think there are legitimate grounds to refuse your objection. As explained before, the receiver might still want to read that message. The receiver was able before to read your message, so one can assume he/she has already knowledge of the personal data in the message. As it is a private message, no one else will be able to read that message. (At least Facebook will not allow it). So if the message is not deleted, the privacy implications for you are low. That's why I think the interests of the receiver will prevail. However, in the end, a judge will be the only person which can make such a consideration. So you would have to got to court to get a final decision about this. Article 21(2) is for direct marketing, that does not apply to this situation. So I think point (c) does also not apply. (d) the personal data have been unlawfully processed; (e) the personal data have to be erased for compliance with a legal obligation in Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject; These points do not apply. (f) the personal data have been collected in relation to the offer of information society services referred to in Article 8(1). This data processing was not based on consent, so even if you are a child below the age of 16 years, point (f) does not apply. Article 17(2) and Article 17(3) wont help you either. So in my opinion Facebook is right in this case.
That's an old idea that has been tried several times before (such as the first, being Unvarnished: Website Lets You Review People (And Trash Them) | HuffPost, which no longer exists); and one of the latest incarnations is Peeple (mobile application - Wikipedia). There are lots of legal liabilities, including defamation and harassment/stalking, even with the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation which (mostly) protects the website owner from others' speech posted on the site (your mileage may vary due to jurisdiction). The only way such a site would survive is to do what Peeple and other sites have done: greatly limit the speech allowed, such as limiting to only positive reviews, giving the subject complete control over what does appear on their profile, only allowing "opt-in" profiles, verify identities, etc. You would have to implement full GDPR compliance; but various lawsuits will either shut you down before you get far enough to launch or soon after and force you to greatly limit the scope of the site. Most lawyers would advise you to find something else to do with your time and money.
No, it is not illegal in UK to use proxies. No, it is not like the tor concept. No, the ISP does not slow you down (they mostly throttle detectable p2p connections), but if you use public proxies, many of them will be unacceptably slow. Note: for things like facebook, a proxy is utterly useless. You already donated your private data to them, there's nothing to hide.
Per GDPR Art 79, you can sue data controllers if you consider your rights to have been violated. Where you have suffered damages due to GDPR infringements, you also have a right to compensation per Art 82. However, your rights may not have been violate as far as the GDPR is concerned. Under the GDPR any kind of personal data processing needs a clear purpose, and that purpose needs a legal basis. One possible legal basis is consent, but there also are others (such as legitimate interest). Just because you didn't consent doesn't mean that your rights have been violated. Where processing is based on legitimate interest, you can object to that processing of your personal data – but your rights must be balanced against that legitimate interest (Art 21). If your friends post a photo and you only appear in the background, your friends' legitimate interest to post that photo likely outweighs your rights. In practice, suing Facebook because of GDPR infringement is not a sensible way to achieve the outcomes that you likely want. First, this is expensive. Second, it is arguable whether Facebook or your friends should be the defendant. Third, removal of existing data won't prevent the processing of new data in the future. It would be more sensible to treat this as an interpersonal rather than a legal problem, and to talk with your friends so that they don't include you in their photos that they would like to share online. I've focussed on photos because their situation is fairly clear. Voice snippets might not count as personal data when you are not identifiable in them. Personal assistant apps should not be listening continuously, but only start recording when a wake-word is recognized.
I understand that storing any hash or IP that can identify &quot;user uniquely&quot; is against GDPR. That is not correct. However any data which is identifiably associated with a an individual human, including any data which could be used to identify that human, is generally &quot;Personal data&quot;, and may not be processed (which includes storing it) without a lawful basis, if the GDPR applies. Any of the six lawful bases allowed by the GDPR may be used, including consent, and the legitimate interest of the data controller. The GDPR does not generally specify that particular technological solutions are permitted or forbidden. If this usage pattern could reasonably be used to identify a particular person, or to single out a person from among a group of people, it is probably personal data, and a lawful basis would be required. Otherwise, not. As for whether such a person is &quot;identifiable&quot; if use of this technique permits the Data Controller to identify two visits at separate times as having been made by the same person, when the later visit is still in progress or is recent, the IP for that visit will still be available, and thus could be associated with the first visit as well. And even if that is not done, such a technique could permit building a profile of such a person, including the actions taken on different visits. I think that would be enough to make this &quot;personal data&quot;.