Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
I wrote an article on 'free websites, data mining, and our personal information. Interested folks can read it here
http://www.stampsmarter.com/Learning/GenNoFreeLunch.html
Don
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Love the image, LOL....
But seriously speaking you are right. Possibly the one thing I would add to your article, is that starting this May here in Europe we've got a thing called GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) coming into effect. What it basically means that services and websites MUST (or otherwise face the risk of penalty):
a) get user consent for data collection (that is what all those "This website uses cookies, and if you agree..." dialogues on websites are all about),
b) and tell clearly what kind of information they are collecting, why they are collecting, how they are storing that data, are they sharing the data and under what terms, - and above all report any failures to protect user data within specific time (for this purpose each and every website should have Privacy policy).
I think this Wikipedia article is a good primer on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation ... In nutshell it's doing a lot of things for protecting the average user in online world.
Possibly the most interesting, and easily omitted part of it all, is that this not applies to websites by European owners, but also websites providing content and services to European visitors (see article #3). As such for example SOR and all other stamp websites are legally bound by these new GDPR-rules (unless they prevent access of European visitors).
Unfortunately a lot of non-European websites (and their owners) either don't care or don't know of this (at least yet).
I'm not saying "free lunch" services are bad. If you read terms of service and privacy policy (WHEN AVAILABLE as SHOULD) before signing up, there should be very little surprises coming out. Facebook, Twitter, StampWorld etc. all tell you with more or less vague expressions how they mine your personal data.. But most people just never read the fine print, they just tick the box / hit the submit button to get onwards as quickly as possible
(And hands up who reads user manuals first - I do, and rest of my family always nags about it to me, LOL)
-k-
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I wrote an article on 'free websites, data mining, and our personal information. Interested folks can read it here
http://www.stampsmarter.com/Learning/GenNoFreeLunch.html
Don
7 Members
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re: There is no free lunch...
Love the image, LOL....
But seriously speaking you are right. Possibly the one thing I would add to your article, is that starting this May here in Europe we've got a thing called GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) coming into effect. What it basically means that services and websites MUST (or otherwise face the risk of penalty):
a) get user consent for data collection (that is what all those "This website uses cookies, and if you agree..." dialogues on websites are all about),
b) and tell clearly what kind of information they are collecting, why they are collecting, how they are storing that data, are they sharing the data and under what terms, - and above all report any failures to protect user data within specific time (for this purpose each and every website should have Privacy policy).
I think this Wikipedia article is a good primer on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation ... In nutshell it's doing a lot of things for protecting the average user in online world.
Possibly the most interesting, and easily omitted part of it all, is that this not applies to websites by European owners, but also websites providing content and services to European visitors (see article #3). As such for example SOR and all other stamp websites are legally bound by these new GDPR-rules (unless they prevent access of European visitors).
Unfortunately a lot of non-European websites (and their owners) either don't care or don't know of this (at least yet).
I'm not saying "free lunch" services are bad. If you read terms of service and privacy policy (WHEN AVAILABLE as SHOULD) before signing up, there should be very little surprises coming out. Facebook, Twitter, StampWorld etc. all tell you with more or less vague expressions how they mine your personal data.. But most people just never read the fine print, they just tick the box / hit the submit button to get onwards as quickly as possible
(And hands up who reads user manuals first - I do, and rest of my family always nags about it to me, LOL)
-k-
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