alt Hacker NewsDutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent
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It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call. It's like some joke from gonzo journalism come to fruition. I don't know what the answer is, but as a person who's been suicidal, for me it wasn't a hotline. It's even more fitting, if not kind of perfect, that said hotlines farm your data and sell it. :chef's kiss: what else is there to say. Like just about everything else, callous people make money while vulnerable, sensitive people pay up. Beautiful world we live in ;). Please drink responsibly!
This kind of thing is why I wouldn't touch a site like that. Websites, service providers, and internet-connected software that collects data from you can't be trusted even a little, so I avoid them to the greatest degree I can. The rule of thumb is that anything you tell to them, or any data you have put in their custody, is at risk.
Data Protection Authority (DPA) should investigate. In Germany, the company's DPO (Data Protection Officer) has personal, criminal liability. For these cases, I'd like to see them in front of criminal court, and see what happens. I wanna see someone having a criminal record for this, and then all the stupid excuses of large companies about "I didn't know" and "I thought lalalala" will stop rather quickly. It will turn out that, at the end of the day, it was just a resource issue. And when criminal liability is on the table, resources magically... appear.
It's time to be serious about this. Unacceptable.
The NL Times just translates Dutch articles and editorializes them for a (mostly American) audience. They should be consistently taken with skepticism. In this case, as other commenters have pointed out, this is "just" Google Analytics.
I missed when tech was about saving people's lives not this
Yea this is bad.
I do want to mention though, while this is bad, I feel like we're singling out a site. Fact is, I've seen more places where this doesn't happen. Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one. And while I've done my best to work at those places to get it fixed, there is a lot of inertia and simply ignorance. I'm not talking about small places either. I'm talking about non-tech places that make their profit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The inertia, the fact that no one else seems to care at such a place. It's an issue. Then I'm always the odd one out and looked at funny. When it's fixed no one really gives a shit and now I'm "that guy". A small form of resentment stays in these people.
Just mentioning my experience. It's stuff like this kind of apathy that gets us a world where a place like a suicide hotline just ignorantly does this kind of stuff. Or at least, that's my hypothesis: it's ignorance and apathy.
There's probably not a lot of data on this which is why I'm sharing this anecdata. I hope it's better than nothing.
I thought Europe was more careful about things like this. This is pretty bad, these people are vulnerable and they're just mining they're data for profit.
"Dutch suicide prevention hotline shares visitor data with tech companies" is certainly one way of saying "Dutch suicide prevention hotline website uses Google Analytics".
Hate this
> This website uses cookies > We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features
I know there are some services that send GDPR data removal requests on your behalf. I wonder if there are any similar services that send messages like "Why the hell do you need these cookies?" to website operators.
I hardly ever see these cookie banners as my browser blocks most of them, but I still think it would be great to rub the idea of "Your website doesn't need any non-technical cookies" in website operators' faces.
If nto illegal, it seems clear that is inappropriate.
Another name for this article title: Dutch suicide prevention website uses bog-standard industry analytics that share absolutely no PII and threatens no one. No individual can be found who's actually experienced harm from this.
Who are the founders, their funders and their motivation?
Sounds like analytics data. The screen recordings of visits I particularly but. I despise when companies do that and act as if it's a normal thing. It might help your support when a user reports an issue but it's a massive violation of a user privacy and most users wouldn't have any idea it was even possible.
I have lately thought about how the only tech I am interested in now is to assist programming. Programming for programming. Eternal yak shaving. And a big part of that is that end-user digital technology is a dystopia. No, not dystopic, not going in a bad direction. Just dystopia. Vultures and thugs at every corner preying on every “convenience” and mistake that you could make.
It is also good for mindless entertainment in between the real things that sometimes happen. And listening to music.
Sheesh, reality is more cynical than any bleak humorist could ever write.
"Do not kill yourself, please! You still have so much value that can be extracted from you."
> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline.
This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-(
What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.
> “At this moment, we are investigating what happened, how this could have occurred, what the potential impact has been, and what our next steps are,” the spokespersons aid. They didn’t say whether the trackers would be turned on again
I hope the investigation that they are saying in the articles goes swiftly to really find out the real reason as to why this ended up happening in first place and the reasons behind it are made public sooner rather than later.
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This kind of crap is why I am moving all of my tech stack to the US
"How many people came to our contact page, but left without calling the hotline?"
"Don't know, boss. We'd need to add analytics."
"Like what?"
"Google Analytics? It's free and pretty much universal."
"Ok, do it."
It's just standard. Not great, and Google uses the data in all sorts of ways that they don't make obvious. But it's not a cabal of evil website owners selling data to tech giants. They're just trying to run their websites and they're using industry standard, free services to do so. It doesn't cross their mind that they're helping google build individual profiles to sell targeted ads.
I'd love for self-hosted analytics to really get a foothold, not just for the increased privacy, but also because all the tech giants cripple your access to the data they collect off your own site.