Can you give me one example where it has helped(not the it would be helpful) the users. All I see now is everyone including FB and Google using the same privacy model, and just ask for big "consent", which is not much better than age old T and C, as I do it without reading it anyways.
Anyone who doesn't care about protecting people's privacy don't care because they don't understand how the data can and will be used. If they did understand and continued not to care (or god fodbid, continued to violate) then they're morally bankrupt.
GDPR is amazing because it forces companies to think twice about the data they collect. Uneducated users tend to blame EU because some of their favorite websites (e.g. imgur) suddenly have a overlay that forces users to consent to them allowing themselves and a hundred random companies to violate users' privacy and force those who don't consent to manually click the opt out button a hundred different times. This should be a wakeup call for people to abandon these evil websites/companies rather than to blame EU.
Don't get me wrong, but I hate this kind of response. It has been many months since GDPR arrived. "This should be a wakeup call" is exactly what I was not asking. Either it has been till now, or will never be. Based on my personal experience, it's the latter for data collecting companies like FB. Unless you change my mind by giving any example of good changes in data collecting sites that has been forced due to GDPR.
> users to consent to them allowing themselves
Isn't it almost the same with always present terms and conditions, which like GDPR consent I and most other users generally don't read.
Even if you can't see it with your own eyes then you can be sure that thousands of companies (including the one I work for) are collecting a lot less data than they normally would (after all, it's often impossible to know exactly what data is being collected, for how long, and how it will be stored). I'm sure you've also noticed some websites even blocked EU visitors until they had time to comply with the law, at least I saw a couple of stories and comments about it on HN. And if the companies didn't care/worry then why would they even bother with consenting overlays?
A lot more people (and not just the tech folks) are also beginning to care about their privacy (not only because of GDPR but I do believe it has had one of the biggest influences, along with the Facebook scandals, China's growing dystopia, etc).
A lot of people (such as myself) also stopped using evil services like imgur, and use every opportunity to encourage people to do the same and spread awareness. Although I had mostly stopped visiting imgur links a long time ago, I didn't really start to bash them and block them completely until I saw their insane GDPR overlay where they showed how they share data with hundreds of different companies and even forced users to visit their websites to opt out.
Stopping people from using these websites/apps is a slow process, but just because you can't see drastic changes then it doesn't mean it isn't affecting them. Would you notice if Signal's userbase had grown by 20% as a result of people becoming aware of the importance of privacy due to GDPR, or if imgur/Facebook dropped by 15%? I wouldn't, but I did notice the likes of Google and Facebook facing multi-billion dollar fines. I've also noticed Facebook has been struggling a lot lately, and that Google has been facing a lot of backlash for their Dragonfly project.
Most European TLDs no longer publish sensitive information in the whois data. This mostly kills the whois protection companies which were just parasites, and also protects the privacy of domain name owners.
> Most European TLDs no longer publish sensitive information in the whois data.
First of all, I don't think it is due to GDPR. Does GDPR mandate that you have to do it freely? Second, namecheap does it for free now, for every domain for users in every country.
Companies who had a data breach (like Mariott recently) are requested to announced it much earlier (72 hours to authorities) and are liable to bigger fines.
It's a completely different thing and it has just been clubbed with GDPR. By GDPR, what most meant is a law aimed for curbing companies that profits from data harvesting and violating privacy.
I hope so. I'd love for evil companies who violate people's privacy (such as Reddit) to abandon EU, as it would allow for good and privacy-focused sites to gain a larger marketshare.
