Why it is important that software projects fail (2008)

Re:Why it is important that software projects fail (2008) by elondaits on Monday September 07, 2020 @10:45AM (#24399737)

The GDPR does not limit the possibility of schools sending out emails to their alumni, it just imposes requirements for doing it right. The GDPR recognizes the risk of the school or someone with access to the school's email db spamming, selling the addresses or harassing students / alumni, and the risk of someone hacking the school servers and stealing the data or targeting students. These are not theoretical risks... they are things that happen, and become more frequent as more of our lives move online and our emails get tied to critical processes.

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Re:Why it is important that software projects fail (2008) by lordnacho on Monday September 07, 2020 @12:11PM (#24400375)

This is of course absolutely true, and I did say that there is some merit to the goals of GDPR. It is merely that in adding this extra work, little is gained. Let me expand a bit, it was one-liner at the end.

My school in fact had my contact details from way before GDPR was a thing. Recently, they were forced to write to confirm that they were allowed to continue contacting me. If I had not responded, they would be compelled to delete my information.

So if I'd missed the message, I would unknowingly be disconnected from further communications.

And what is to be gained from this? All the risks of someone hacking the school system are the same, someone could still spam everyone, and so on. Why not just have an opt-out system, defaulting to stay-on-the-list? Then people who care to be removed can do so, but we can assume quite confidently that most alumni of a school want to remain in contact.

It just smells like someone had a use case they were thinking of that perhaps made sense to have a default-remove, but they ended up imposing it on everyone.

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