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Tell HN: The Price of Personal Information Is 1GB

3 points by kayxspre ↗ HN
I lived in Thailand. The country has recently enacted Personal Data Protection Act 2019 (PDPA), but was delayed from becoming effective as the affected sectors are not ready. The law is essentially GDPR/CCPA in my country, meaning that business requires consent to process personal information. I don't usually object to the strictly necessary/legitimate interest, but I don't want my data to be used for targeted advertising, so I often decline the latter.

Today, I got an SMS that says "Get Free 1GB of Internet for 24 hours by simply provide consent to process personal data under PDPA. More info at (website)". It came from mobile carrier that has 14 affiliated companies. I take a look at the website and it says:

"... for the purpose of analyze and predict my preference or behavior, R&D, product improvement and marketing planning in order to allow each company to present product/service/privilege/promotions and offers ... that has been carefully optimized and selected for your preference"

They said opt-out is possible, but they has not announced how. Other places that employ opt-out sometimes make it more difficult to opt-out (asked for opt-in in store, call to opt-out). 1GB of Internet for their indefinite period of using my data for advertising is simply not comparable, so I decline to provide consent. I don't know how long will they ask me again. Has anyone been enticed to provide consent in similar manner? Would love to hear it!

5 comments

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car_analogy
Do the GDPR or PDPA forbid such practices? If not, it would be easy to offer an unreasonably bad/expensive service, and a bonus/discount if one agrees to surveillance, rendering the laws moot.

I haven't heard of such practices concerning the GDPR, so I assume it doesn't allow such circumvention?

bryanrasmussen
Right, you cannot offer a service contingent on providing PII if you do not need that PII to run the service.

Thus Airbnb might need your PII to lease you a house, but Thomson Reuters does not need it to give you a news article.

wara23arish
I always assumed that GDPR was for taking data away with no consent.

Are you saying that people cant consent to giving away their data for something they deem worth it?

1G of internet is enough to use whatsapp for months. In some economies like Lebanon, that is lifesaving believe it or not.

Guess the question is, is GDPR taking away the ability for users to make decisions about their own data ?

car_analogy
> Guess the question is, is GDPR taking away the ability for users to make decisions about their own data ?

Due to uniform surveillance, users couldn't make decisions about their own data before the GDPR. So, no, it's not. Plus, the GDPR itself is the democratic expression of user preferences in face of the market failure to respect them.

And finally, the GDPR does not apply in Lebanon. Though since the US "kills based on metadata" [1], the "lifesaving" goes both ways.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2014/05/12/michael-hayden-gleefully...

wara23arish
Forgive me since english isnt my native language, what do you mean by uniform surveillance? I tried googling it with gdpr didnt really get anything substantial. Do you simply mean data mining?

From what I gather GDPR includes a list of regulations some can be good some bad.

My question was simply if a user consents to give away their own data is that still possible under GDPR (given the process to consent is clear and not a dark pattern) Im not trying to trash it or discuss all of its merits.

Please dont tell me you believe the US will stop using metadata to conduct drone strikes because of any law passed. Sorry to be blunt but it is foolish and naive to assume so.