Re:US proposes barring tech companies from offering financia...
by salawat on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:46PM
(#20527616)
The problem is no company wants that as they would essentially be required to publicly reveal their entire web of business partners, which is generally closely guarded as a source of competitive advantage.
This is the Great Asymmetry, as it were. They want to be able to invade your privacy and capitalize on your information, but will raise all Hell against being forced to reveal anything that could give anyone else a leg up on them.
Until this is reconciled via either a return to a non-invasive business environment, I.e. companies collect only enough state to do business with you, and the norm is not to data share, or companies are forced to explicitly reveal who they are doing business with in order to get explicit permission, abusive data harvesting/sharing will win the day.
A thousand times yes! I am a free market kind of guy and your proposal fits with that philosophy because while I might do business with <some credit card or bank> I am not doing business with their “partners.” And, the term “our partners” that come with the privacy policies is so nebulous as to be worthless. Does <some bank> have a partnership with a flower delivery service? Maybe, I have no idea and no reasonable expectation that they do. So why can my data be sold to such out of scope “partners” under a generic consent. I should have the right to consent to each and every specific partner that the institution wants to sell my data to.