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> Banks, jobs will use all information against you

In the EU and Finland there are laws regulating what private data banks or companies can use or collect.

For example, companies are forbidden from googling job applicant without their permission or looking at their social media. They also can't by data from data collectors like they do in the US.




again you're making the mistake that nobody would even try to break these laws as these are very hard to enforce.

they probably have loopholes the size of trucks where they could hire outside sources to do such things but hide their sources.


In the US company can buy your information from data brokers. It contains your social networks, opinions etc. In EU doing that would be huge risk and it's not generally done.

Just because there are loopholes and regulations can be violated does not make regulation pointless. It directs behaviour and what is considered acceptable.


I think there are two ways to manage these types of issues.

1. Bring it fully legal and have a large impact on how it is done in cooperation with government. It could be beneficial to allow government insight so that it can prepare the general public about what is going on or how society might reflect on it. In general I believe we should be aware of all of the things this data can do. If during full disclosure people want this data regulated so be it.

2. Criminalize it (hard mode). It looks like with GDPR it will be criminalized and it will rely on companies using good faith on acquiring data like this. It will be regularly impossible to defeat all criminal actions but there will be no question who has the athority on such measures.

With regards to both methods i see huge problems in the public understanding who is using and how the information is used. So it seems for now there is a few options left. One of which is to restrict knowledge and keep good people in power with the opportunity to use this data. Even with that we fail daily.

everything is a struggle but perhaps this issue might shape how humans interact with eachother in the future the most.


That's the point with GDPR; you can't just start using personal data unless the person has given explicit permission for that data being used for that specific purpose. That applies to data from outside sources as well.


Again you're not going to catch everyone or even a large fraction of people who do it.


Do those laws apply if you sign a consent waiver? Like terms of service: agree to X or we won’t give you service.


EU also has regulations to what rights people can sign away.

Data collection must have a reason and the data collected be relevant to achieve the task they are doing. Collect everything for no whatever reason is not allowed. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/internet-tel...


This is unfortunately not true for health data. There is an exemption for those that those can be collected for research purposes if a member entity legalize that. That is the case in Germany for people who are not privately insured. Their health data is centrally collected for research purposes.


Yes, they can't be signed away. Nuances matter of course, but regarding data privacy rights the general situation is that if you sign some contract with a clause 'agree to X or we won’t give you service' then that clause is simply invalid as it conflicts with the law and is not binding. If a company would use that data, then they can be fined for using that data without consent since that is not valid (freely given) consent.




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