As we're sure many of you know, a big new privacy and data protection thing is coming into force next month from the EU, called the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Any website that takes any information from anyone in the EU, has to comply with it, or face huge fines. Naturally, we want to ensure we're complying.
Here's a few steps we've already done
- All YouTube embeds in comments/forum posts now use YouTube's enhanced privacy mode, which doesn't load a single cookie until you hit play.
- All future articles with a YouTube embed will also use YouTube's enhanced privacy mode, we're working to update all older articles with a script soon.
- We recently (read: finally) added the ability for you to delete your own individual comments. Was on the todo list for a long time, sorry it took so long. This will be rolled out to the forum too ASAP.
- If you wish to completely remove your account (not "hidden"—just completely gone), there's an option to do so in your User Control Panel now.
- All new users PC Info is now opt-in to the Monthly User Statistics, this can be changed any time with a new checkbox labelled "Include your PC details in our Monthly User Statistics?" at the top of the User Control Panel page for PC Info. Not a big change, but it means now you can display your PC Info without being in the survey. For people who have it checked and leave it for a long time, data is eventually cut out of the monthly survey that we consider stale anyway, so it wouldn't be included when it gets too old. To be clear on our user survey: no user identifiable information is included for the survey output, no user id, no username or anything—just the answers.
- We've removed the Twitter embed in the right sidebar, so that Twitter cookies and tracking does not touch our website at all. To be clear, the Twitter handle @gamingonlinux still exists, just the embed for it on our site is gone.
- The registration page now includes links to our Ethics and Privacy policy pages (can be found any time in the site's footer).
- This was done a long time ago, but as a reminder, if you wish your profile to be private, you can do so by setting it in the User Control Panel Privacy page. We've decided that going forward, all new users profiles will be private by default. We're eventually going to add more specific details of what you wish to show on your profile page instead of private or public. Luckily, we don't actually store or show a lot of information anyway.
- We've removed the ability for users to set an avatar from a URL. While we're sure our security was tight on that to ensure they 100% are linking to an image, it's just not worth the hassle if somehow a script slipped past it and stored a cookie on your PC. You can still pick an avatar from the gallery (which we will expand) or upload an avatar directly.
- When a submitted article is approved, we're making sure to wipe the email and IP that it was submitted from. They're only stored to block spammers (based on IP) and to email you if it's accepted or denied. Denied articles are completely removed.
Other misc updates:
- Notifications older than six months are now being wiped, to help keep our database lean and mean. To be honest, if you haven't visited in six months it's likely any notifications are pointless.
- We removed the GamingOnLinux Facebook Group embed from the right sidebar on the homepage, this was unrelated to GDPR. We just didn't like their data handling with the recent stuff in the news. To be clear, the GOL Facebook Group still exists, just the embed for it on our site is gone.
- We now included a standard message in all articles, at the bottom to notify you that certain links will be affiliate links. So no editor can forget (read: me, I'm forgetful).
You can find more about GDPR here.
Personally, while testing our site using uBlock Origin in Chrome, I don't see a single notification about anything blocked, so that's good. Since we have no adverts, no outside statistics tracking or anything (we don't even use Google Analytics like most sites do) there should be nothing to be concerned about.
If you feel there's something we should be doing that we're not to help protect your privacy and data, do let us know any time.
Ps. You can follow random progress on gitlab here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: HamishI guess GDPR applies to any personal information the wiki stores about users. Wiki page content itself is regulated by other laws I'd think, like any public content, articles and such.Quoting: NonjuffoI don't think GDPR applies to services like Github. If it did, it would also apply to things like scientific journals, which operate on the same basic underlying principles (i.e. the content is deliberately publicized along with the (pseudo-)identity of the authors).
How about Wikis just to broaden the discussion a bit?
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Quoting: Guestublock's ability to pre-configure itself for each site is nice, but if you disagree with it (for instance, a site loading Facebook when there's almost always no reason for it to) it doesn't let you start blocking it, or at least not easily, while 3P does, but 3P also starts off unconfigured so it's more of a hassle.You just need to enable advanced features in uBlock Origin's configuration to get a nice, clickable list that allows you to block or allow stuff. If that's what you mean. You could also enable one of the stricter third party social block lists.
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Quoting: minjQuoting: tuubiQuoting: minjWhat is a session, anyway? HTTP is a state-less protocol. You get a session by saving a session identifier in a... session cookie.You're getting stuck on the terminology. The session doesn't need to include any identifiable private data. Just a randomly generated session id and a variable that tells the service not to store cookies on the user's system.
Cookie is a cookie is a cookie, otherwise why would every random site bother you about it on your first visit ever?
There are different types of cookies and the EU rules e.g exempt the following types of cookies from the "consent requirement":
Quoteuser‑input cookies (session-id) such as first‑party cookies to keep track of the user's input when filling online forms, shopping carts, etc., for the duration of a session or persistent cookies limited to a few hours in some cases
authentication cookies, to identify the user once he has logged in, for the duration of a session
user‑centric security cookies, used to detect authentication abuses, for a limited persistent duration
multimedia content player cookies, used to store technical data to play back video or audio content, for the duration of a session
load‑balancing cookies, for the duration of session
user‑interface customisation cookies such as language or font preferences, for the duration of a session (or slightly longer)
third‑party social plug‑in content‑sharing cookies, for logged‑in members of a social network.
More info can be found here (as well as EU supplied Javascript to add tacookie acceptance banner): http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
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Incase your interested. Privacy Badger is still reporting up to 8 potential trackers per page and is blocking cookies from them. These places might not be tracking with cookies but PB is ensuring to block them anyway. I think PB just blocks cookies from any external source other than the site your looking at.
I visited various pages on this site, Here is a list of "potential" trackers according to PB.
www.gravatar.com
www.gstatic.com
fonts.googleapis.com
www.google.com
fonts.gstatic.com
www.youtube-nocookie.com
i.ytimg.com
s.ytimg.com
i0.wp.com
yt3.ggpht.com
I visited various pages on this site, Here is a list of "potential" trackers according to PB.
www.gravatar.com
www.gstatic.com
fonts.googleapis.com
www.google.com
fonts.gstatic.com
www.youtube-nocookie.com
i.ytimg.com
s.ytimg.com
i0.wp.com
yt3.ggpht.com
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Quoting: tuubiQuoting: HamishI guess GDPR applies to any personal information the wiki stores about users. Wiki page content itself is regulated by other laws I'd think, like any public content, articles and such.Quoting: NonjuffoI don't think GDPR applies to services like Github. If it did, it would also apply to things like scientific journals, which operate on the same basic underlying principles (i.e. the content is deliberately publicized along with the (pseudo-)identity of the authors).
How about Wikis just to broaden the discussion a bit?
From MayeulC's link (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/, paragraph (3):
[Right to erasure] shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary:
a) for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information;
d) for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) in so far as the right referred to in paragraph 1 is likely to render impossible or seriously impair the achievement of the objectives of that processing;
To my interpretation those exemptions would cover Wikis.
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Simply put, I welcome the GDPR and what it's doing to the Internet on behalf of the common person's right to freedom of expression and freedom of privacy.
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For those interested, you can track more ramblings on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/liamdawe/gamingonlinux/issues/307
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Made lots of progress on this, for those who care. Here's the just of it:
Working on having the user deletion tool fuzzy usernames in quotes if a user deletes their account so:
For YouTube, additionally I'm waiting to see what Google do by the GDPR deadline. I really don't want to force 100% of our users through some JS script that forces you to accept something on our end, before you can even click the video. It's Google's job to ensure you're properly informed, I hope they add a proper notice. It's good they offer the no cookie version, but it's not enough. Same for reCAPTCHA.
I'm not sitting on my hands though, I have code waiting and W.I.P to not show a video unless people accept cookies in a banner on our site just in case.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 23 April 2018 at 5:49 am UTC
- All 9K+ articles have all their YouTube videos switched over to the YouTube no cookie URL. I'm waiting to see how Google handle the GDPR deadline, before I force site visitors to click something before they can see them. I'm hoping google add some form of notice, that once you click a video you get cookies - it's their damn job to do so.
- I've also improved our user deletion tool, so it will remove article likes a user made if a user removes their account. It wouldn't show anyway since their account would be gone, but it cleans it all up and adjusts the total likes for an article properly.
- We also now remove unactivated users 10 days after they register if not activated.
- Remove the IP of someone who hasn't logged in for 3 months, after that long we really have no need for it. They can't login if banned anyway. Also set their profile to private, they may forget about it.
- We now only pull in google recaptcha JS in the files that need it (register, contact us, submit article) nowhere else.
- Users PC Info they submit for our monthly survey is auto-wiped after 2 years, both preventing stale data and personal data anyone forgets about.
- I also fixed up the full-article RSS feed for YouTube videos, iframes don't seem to work, so we're pulling in the high quality thumbnail with a link to the video - better than seeing a blank space.
Working on having the user deletion tool fuzzy usernames in quotes if a user deletes their account so:
Quoting: liamdawetestBecomes
Quoting: Guesttest
For YouTube, additionally I'm waiting to see what Google do by the GDPR deadline. I really don't want to force 100% of our users through some JS script that forces you to accept something on our end, before you can even click the video. It's Google's job to ensure you're properly informed, I hope they add a proper notice. It's good they offer the no cookie version, but it's not enough. Same for reCAPTCHA.
I'm not sitting on my hands though, I have code waiting and W.I.P to not show a video unless people accept cookies in a banner on our site just in case.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 23 April 2018 at 5:49 am UTC
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After watching a few hours of videos on youtube and having a 2 hour meeting at work where some of it was explained I still don't have a clue as to how to produce the needed documentation for what we have. I work in a municipality though so we can't just focus on the GDPR, and even though I personally don't handle more than a fraction of the data we have (system admin kinda role, it's complicated:P), I still love the whole thing.
Not because it is a lot of work but because a lot of my colleagues are acting like a bunch of ignorant FB users who now have to think about what personal information actually is. It's the need to know/nice to know and consent part of it that makes ppl actually have to care about other peoples data, not only as an employee but also as a private citizen.
I understand why this is a lot of work for small business and sites and I don't envy them :P
Not because it is a lot of work but because a lot of my colleagues are acting like a bunch of ignorant FB users who now have to think about what personal information actually is. It's the need to know/nice to know and consent part of it that makes ppl actually have to care about other peoples data, not only as an employee but also as a private citizen.
I understand why this is a lot of work for small business and sites and I don't envy them :P
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Quoting: TiedemannAfter watching a few hours of videos on youtube and having a 2 hour meeting at work where some of it was explained I still don't have a clue as to how to produce the needed documentation for what we have.
No offence, but the final approval of the GDPR was in April 2016, so you had two years of time to inform yourself about this. The text was final in April 2016 and, like everything EU, public. Especially if you work in a muncipality, as part of the government, the information should have been passed down long ago.
And it's not just you. All this rushing, from multiple (most?) orgs in the month before it goes live, after two years of forewarning, feels...not good.
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