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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

> The FLoC component in Chrome needs to call Google’s servers to check if it can function since Google is only enabling it in parts of the world that are not covered by Europe’s GDPR

This is all you should need to know about it.

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Except there may be perfectly benign reasons for doing this, not "this is totally illegal in the EU but let's just push it on everyone else".

For example, the lawyers may believe the technology is legal, but haven't worked through all the implications with respect to the GDPR. So the end goal may be that it is launched in the EU, but they aren't ready to do so yet.

Man GDPR is such a pain to implement and UX-wise, but it seems to actually have improved personal data protection.

It's not. For non-essential stuff you need permission from your user. So don't track and you don't need to show a cookie banner even if you use cookies.

It is not really about the cookie banner though. It is more about user info that is saved anywhere, so for things with accounts etc. it is really relevant.

You mean it's not a pain, or that it's not helpful?

Not a pain.

I think that's the whole point of GDPR. Linda like the Windows alerts, if they are made/forced to be made obnoxious enough, the ux suffers and companies just learn to play nice instead.

I don't see what you mean. It's very easy to be GDPR compliant, just don't track your users. In fact, it's more work to be non-compliant than to be compliant.

That depends on what you are doing. If you are doing ecommerce, you need shipping address. GDPR does add work in this case.

A little extra work in order to kill a lot of adtech is arguably a good thing.

Is not using the shipping address for any other reason than shipping an order really that much more effort?

Sure, protecting that information is more effort, but you should be doing that already, right? not just from a GDPR perspective but a business perspective too - if a competitor can get a list of all your clients and send them brochures with 10% discount on your prices, you'll close down pretty quick.

Why do you have the list? Ideally, you purge their information after the order is delivered.

I agree all systems should have better support for autocompletion so that users configure address only once for device, not for each service. Not only is this more private, it is also more convenient. Alas, until support is in place, remembering address is significantly more convenient for users.

"protection" would include deleting once no longer required, does it not? Can't lose something you don't have in the first place.

> not just from a GDPR perspective but a business perspective too - if a competitor can get a list of all your clients and send them brochures with 10% discount on your prices, you'll close down pretty quick.

Link to this ever happening pre-GDPR?

This is pretty well documented in business law. former employee transfers to competitor, takes clientele with them.

https://www.acumenbusinesslaw.co.uk/2018/07/23/a-former-empl...

Amazing how people won't spare a minute to enter their details every time they place an order.

To them, I'd say "order with Amazon, then", but sadly that's a lot of lost clients.

Yes, it is a pain to implement user-hostile “features” that GDPR was designed against. It’s working as intended!

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