Tumblr’s at it again, thanks to the new European Privacy Laws. There’s probably nobody who will read this, but it pissed me off so much that I decided to make a post about it. (Ignore the weird language mish-mash, depending on your country the language might differ.)
OK, so many of us get this screen when we try to access our dash:
Realise how the ‘OK’ button is a nice, attention-grabbing blue? If you’re like me, you’re not exactly into reading a 100 pages document and tend to just click it.
My tip? DONT. Instead click on ‘Manage Options’ right next to it:
Now you’ll see this page:
Still pretty harmless, right? That ‘Accept’ button is looking really attractive right now. Instead, click on Verwalten (Probably something like ‘Manage Options’ or something in english) and you’ll get to this page:
Now that’s not too bad, right? I just switched all the buttons to ‘off’, because I’m jealously guarding my personal information and don’t want Tumblr to go off and do who knows what with it. Looks like we’re done! But wait: There’s a SHOW option.
When we click on that one, what we will get is this:
A HUGE list with OVER 300 ENTRIES of companies that can use your data by default if you’d just clicked ‘OK’ on that very first page. Coincidence that this list is hidden that much? Me thinks not. They’re all switched on by default, but I am still a petty bitch that doesn’t want to give out her data, so I switched them all off. All 300+ of them. There is no option to switch them all off at once, and even if you disable all the options above, the companies are still switched on.
(If you wonder how i got that number, I copied the list into excel and looked at the cell number. No way am I actually counting all those entries)
I too, am a petty bitch who unticked every single one.
This petty bitch recommends taking five minutes to turn all of the above off.
This (and the fix) doesn’t apply to the US version, according to the comments. However, silver lining:
Forcing consent in these forms like they’re doing in Europe is an actionable no no:
“GDPR: noyb.eu filed four complaints over “forced consent” against Google, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook
Corporations forced users to agree to new privacy policies.
A clear violation of the GDPR. Potential penalty: up to € 7 billion in total.
Privacy à la “take it or leave it”? The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into force today at midnight is supposed to give users a free choice, whether they agree to data usage or not. The opposite feeling spread on the screens of many users: Tons of “consent boxes” popped up online or in applications, often combined with a threat, that the service cannot longer be used if user do not consent. One the first day of GDPR noyb.eu has therefor files four complaints against Google (Android), Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram over “forced consent”. Max Schrems chair of noyb.eu: “Facebook has even blocked accounts of users who have not given consent. In the end users only had the choice to delete the account or hit the “agree”-button – that’s not a free choice, it more reminds of a North Korean election process.”
funeral-biscuit 