Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

From their privacy policy: https://matter.xyz/privacy

> If we make changes to this privacy policy, we will update it here and update the effective date at the top. (We can’t email you about changes because we don’t collect everyone’s email addresses.) Changes to this policy will not apply retroactively.

Effectively they can change it any time and you probably won't know.

If they violate it, what power do you have to enforce it? Pay an attorney six figures? For what damages under what law?

Also, I'm not sure what 'retroactively' means here, legally: They have my data and change the policy; can they tomorrow use my data according to the new policy? (Not that it matters much, because I won't know about the changes anyway.)

Perhaps it means that a change to the policy can’t be used to justify actions taken that would have broken a prior version of the policy but which don’t violate the new one. Granted, I don’t have a complete understanding of the legal enforceability of a company’s privacy policy.

This is exactly as good as it gets as a privacy extremist - if they don't have your email, they won't send it, if they change it, the changes won't apply to you.

They explicitly ruled out using your data according the new policy - retroactively means, if they update it, the updated version doesn't apply to you.

> if they don't have your email, they won't send it

They could post a notice in their app, for example.

> They explicitly ruled out using your data according the new policy - retroactively means, if they update it, the updated version doesn't apply to you.

I think it's much more vague than that. Maybe it's not retroactive to prior actions of theirs or to prior data they had. You're assuming it's not to prior users.

My read there is that it won't apply retroactively to data you've already given them, but will apply to data you give them in the future, regardless of they are able to notify you of the change or not.

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