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Privacy statements

The same is valid for general terms where applicable

General remarks and observations

  • A privacy statement is often a document which describes how you privacy will be violated. We found them often inconsistent
  • Try to discover inconsistencies and omissions which can violate your privacy
  • Although mentioned in the privacy statement that your privacy is protected we found a lot of companies and institutions who do not live up to that promise in their privacy statement. Even after confronting them with our findings nothing changed
  • So far we did not encounter a privacy statement which mentions how is made sure the privacy statement is actually implemented and audited on a regular interval
  • Reading and understanding all those privacy statements is undoable, it takes too much time. So in fact one does not know what is happening with someones data

An experience based vision

A privacy statement or giving consent to access a website is only an annoyance People click, “agree”, it out of the way. Not because they agree with the statement but because they want to, need to, use the service. How legally valid it the clicking on the agree button then? How morally valid it the clicking on the agree button then? The same is valid for cookie statements, which often incorporated in the privacy statements

Respect

Privacy statements most of the time only tell how the privacy of the visitor is violated, not how the privacy of the visitor is respected

Complicated

Often privacy statements are complicated, it takes al lot, to much, time to read them (all), understand the consequences (if they are understandeble at all), observe what is not written, missing, and understand the consequences and take appropriate action. That action can involve a lot of writing to and from the organization, be very time consuming and more than often does not yield any positive result for the visitor. It is understandable that most people do not take that route.

Third party services

Often you read in a privacy statement about third party services that the privacy statement of the website visited does not incorporate the actions taken by the third party. So the visitor also has to process the privacy statement of the third party / third parties. But the visitor has nothing to do with those third parties. They are a choice of the website owner. So those third party statements are of no valid to the visitor. Only the privacy statement of the website visited is valid. The website owner has to make sure that the third parties do comply to the privacy statement of the visited website. Better is it not to use third parties at all

Changes

Often you read in a privacy statement something like: “This privacy statement can change. Visit this page regularly to observe any changes.”
This is an insult (better word please) to the visitor.

  • Mostly there is not even a changelog so the visitor, if he takes the time and effort, can quickly see what has changed since his last visit
  • There are better ways, like e-mail, to inform visitors

Checking compliance

  • There being a privacy statement does not mean that the privacy statement is in compliance with the law
  • Most of the services we encounter have no auditing by an independent organization of its privacy statement in place as far as we can tell
  • Mostly it is for the user of a service not possible to verify that the service complies to its privacy statement. So all the user can do is give as little as possible information to the service or do not use the service at all

Reasons for rejection

  • Too vague
  • Too complex
  • Does not comply with the GDPR
    • References to privacy statements of involved third parties

Main subjects on this wiki: Linux, Debian, HTML, Microcontrollers, Privacy

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privacy_statements.txt · Last modified: 02-11-2021 14:41 by wim