> everyone

The details around that are a significant source of friction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Israel

“If you were a Russian soldier wouldn’t you rather work in administration in Moscow than invade and murder Ukrainians.”

Sure but the real answer is try what you can to get the fuck out of there so you don’t have to do harm to someone you don’t even know.

It's the opposite, the most talented in every sense volonteer to fight in combat units in Gaza. Everyone who ends up in 8200 or any other non combat unit has some sort of reason health or family. Later there is some selection, so smart but most importantly extremely valuable experience that acts as a spring board into the startup world later on(cybersec or anything else).

Doesn't matter. All of this stuff, servers included, need to be based on open source, maintained to a large part by European engineers, and hosted in the EU by people with security clearence. It makes NO sense whatsoever to risk this sensitive data getting stolen.

> your HN data (comments and maybe more) is shared and licensed with all Y Combinator startups.

HN comments are public and are available through several archives and datasets.

Deleting old comments wouldn’t stop anyone from having access to them, but it would make old HN threads frustrating to read. Old Reddit threads are becoming painful to read on the Reddit website due to all of the people posting and then overwriting their old comments with scripts.

seconded. even if you happen to figure out where to send your email they just refuse and say its unfair to them and others to ask for it to be deleted. its pretty shameless. if I ever hit it big one of my expenditures will be suing to force them to honor deletion requests.

I already assumed that. But maybe I’m the minority. Unless someone explicitly says they are privacy focused, I assume the worst and anonymize

> your HN data […] is shared and licensed with all

TBH, if a service doesn't explicitly say what data I expose to it _won't_ be shared, I assume it will be immediately and repeatedly.

Though also if a service does explicitly say the data won't be shared, I still assume that it will eventually be given to the highest bidder, then the next highest, and the next, and so on. If not deliberately, it will at some point be hacked from without or unofficially exfiltrated from within.

And on a public site like HN all bets are off as the information is probably being scraped by everyone, their dogs, and their dogs' fleas, even more so now LLMs are such a big thing.

well I AM aware that my comments here are shared with the whole world, which Y Combinator startups are a subset of...

> it's also impossible to delete your own data, either on HN or data shared with the Y Combinator startups (except by some 'beware of the leopard' email procedure).

This violates EU's GDPR article 17 I believe, at the very least, thank you for raising the point.

If services offered a paid version that guaranteed privacy, such that I stay anonymous and only data points that are strictly necessary to provide the service are persisted in the company's servers, I would happily pay.

And I mean guaranteed in a way that I would have legal recourse against the company if they go back on their word or screw up

Have consumers ever been offered the ability to pay Google to opt out of advertisements and to opt into privacy?

I would be very happy to discuss the matter with you but there seems to be some hostility and edge in the way you argue your point which makes it hard to engage with.

Anyway, in short, everything you said applies to literally any human or even animal: if you give them something for free and then take it away unless they pay for it, they won't accept it (google maps). On the other hand, if you provide something for a price, and it's needed, people will pay even if there is an alternative (e.g. Netflix).

The difference is that many/most people are ok with ads as a form of payment for the free services, while others (including Europeans) are not ok with the additional hidden clauses regarding how their personal data is used. Is that wrong? I don't think so.

To make it more realistic, imagine getting a TV for free because it will insert ads every X minutes. The tradeoffs are pretty clear: Good TV for my time/attention.

But if someone then started also recording from said TV the inside of my room, my and my family's faces to be sold to unknown parties for unknown uses (and sometimes even to antagonists) then I don't think anyone would believe it is a fair implementation of the original and presented "agreement" (even if it is stated in their 1000 pages ToS).

Now, if Europeans start being vocal politically that such an invasion of privacy is not acceptable, does that make their claims invalid because there is no valid alternative to such services?

I'm pretty sure today's tech giants would be profitable even without the privacy invasion and the selling of the data; furthermore if their premium versions did not actually show you ads (some show you ads even if you pay), I'm sure people will slowly start gravitating there as they stop being ok trading their attention/time for money.

But if Facebook explicitly told you "pay us X/mo or we will sell your personal data to Russia", would people actually pay them or, perhaps, would they start considering other saner alternatives? I guess we'll never know.

> taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram

I believe an EU member state could create any service that American companies already proved are desirable, make it free for nationals and residents and require payment for others, and use EUDI as the login and verification. Probably for quite cheap. They're just too incompetent.

This really is a major issue imho. Many of the people here and those who are more tech savvy would be willing to pay for such a thing, but we are a very small minority. 90% of people don't care, or are unable or unwilling to understand the consequences of having all their data vacuumed up by corporations like Google and Facebook. Its a Tyranny of the majority type of situation. I'm not sure what the solution to this would be other than maybe better educating the populace.

> Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.

Ok, but only if one of them is called “EuroVision”.

>money

Android phone contracts seem strangely cheap.

Perhaps if the choice was "forced", it would encourage actual competition.

I'm pissing in the wind, but I'd prefer it if the use of personal data - sold for adverts - was banned outright. Particularly for large companies.

This would forced Google et al to charge for their services, creating the market that would stimulate competitors (Open Source or otherwise).

People will argue against this, but online advertising that got us to where we are is the absolute scourge of modern society ... it's poisoned every decent well of humanity.

Even for things like Youtube Premium, I'm certain Google are double dipping ... likely quadruple dipping.

>People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google.

Markets outcomes are not a prophecy.

If it was so simple - why put the unsubscrube or privacy rules behind UI/UX features that required A/B testing and behavioral analysis to make it as onerous as possible?

People aren't happy that they to sell their privacy, and had to be reassured that this is the best option.

Not to mention, this was during an era of camraderie between the US and Europe, not a potential opponent. The idea of a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram or CountryThing will pick up steam. Why have your information farmed by a nation which acts in a hostile manner to its erstwhile allies?

Dons psychic hat - and EuroTube and EuroGram will be widely ignored because most people are not only apparently fine with getting taken advantage of if it’s shiny and they don’t notice it.

The reason for all the data/lack of privacy stuff is because most people get something from it - the next shiny manipulative BS thing, or shiny gadget or whatever.

How about the other perspective?

The current modus operandi for tech companies is to offer something for free or below market price, gain a userbase, lock them in and destroy competitors who don't have cash to burn, then alter the deal.

If I start using a company's offerings, I have certain expectations, such as the terms and conditions suddenly not changing from under me. Now, you can argue that they are required by law to inform me of any changes to the literal Terms and Conditions. Well, yes, except:

1) They are often worded so carefully from the beginning that they can start doing something exploitative at a later date, only after gaining goodwill and users by not doing it.

2) I can't very well stop using a service if doing so incurs a loss to me. Phone operators are required by law in some countries to allow customers to transfer their phone number to a competitor. I am not aware of a similar law for email addresses. And email is at least 1:1, what any other operator offers it technologically compatible due to open protocols, so a transfer is possible. There are services with no 1:1 alternative.

( Hopefully Open Social will change that but we're not there yet: https://overreacted.io/open-social/ )

---

There's also informed consent. Most countries don't allow people below a certain age to have sex because they might not understand all the implications and consequences. How many people do truly understand how tracking and profiling works, the risks of data breaches, doxxing, stalking, surveillance, etc? I argue informed consent cannot be formed unless people are aware of _exactly_ where each bit of data about them is stored and accessed; and also are made aware of the probabilities of all the possible adverse events over their lifetime.

>People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google.

Nope. At least I was offended, because YT Premium wanted $15 from me for hosting other people's videos. That's more than streaming services that pay for production of TV shows and movies.

Don't think they really need THAT much to cover hosting costs. Not when they operate on that scale and in addition can hover up and profit on all the usage data.

If YT Premium costed $3 or $5, I'd pay and I'd bully any friends and family that watch YT and don't pay into supporting the service. As it is now, my appraisal skill says "SCAM" and I pirate YT with clean conscience.

you mean Apple that scans all your photos to send to police? despite all the flak it got after first attempt at doing so?

You mean Apple that said they'd never spy on their users only to be caught spying on their users?

You mean the Apple that gets targeted by Israel spyware firms constantly? The Apple iPhone used by a Saudi journalist named Adman Khasoggi whose iphone was hacked with Israeli spyware, targeted and murdered? Just one example.

Apple devices aren’t secure either.

You've said a lot so excuse myself if I don't address all your points or address them enough.

>proton

Yes, probably 'good enough' at the scale they have as an alternative.

>Obviously, this will never happen.

Hard sell for sure vs the status quo.

>Obviously, this will never happen. So either the government makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously compete or implements a "great firewall of Europe" Chinese/Russian style and forces the change.

Consumer change of habits but obviously having alternatives count.

>Is there any place left in the EU

Is definitely a problem wrt dependency. Also outages from Cloudflare etc suggest further dependency and its all about convenience.

>The only solution is that all European governments force themselves to ONLY work through "sovereign" channels not dependent on American companies.

They don't. The US companies have gradually pushed the envelope and unfortunately EU reaction has resulted in time wasting cookie modals etc for front end users. There is surely a measure of lost EU business opportunity vs what is actually happening, a wholesale copyright and privacy override. Google was bad enough before AI but now it's just wholesale stealing of everyone's everything.

> either the government makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously compete

Europeans have already made open source versions of quite a few things as side projects without any funding. The issue is a lack of transparency (by American standards) that hides just how hideously incompetent and outrageous (even by American standards) member state governments are. (PACER is a big reason how Americans know what Europeans are ignorant about.) I do believe an EU member state could otherwise create any service that American companies already proved are desirable, make it free for nationals and residents and require payment for others, and use EUDI as the login and verification, probably for quite cheap.

wow, you all are having some crazy nationalistic thing going on it seems.

best of luck

How enforceable is GDPR against foreigners anyways? FANGs are motivated to comply because any sufficiently large corporation will inevitably have assets that the EU can freeze, but otherwise it's just a limp-dick attempt at exerting sovereignty well beyond their borders which will get laughed out of any court.

Yes gdpr could be good. But instead it’s a cookies warning.

I wonder why Ireland has such lackluster enforcement of GDPR...

Oh, aren't many of big tech's EU HQs in Ireland?

> there is never any security since the code in the browser can simply be swapped with compromised code that diverts the plaintext somewhere.

This is not the case in the land of DICE-like key derivation; see TKey protocol for example. You can download and run an actual rv32 program on actual FPGA over WebUSB without having to worry about its provenance. If the program is modified, firmware will derive a completely different key.

Security is an illusion.

LOL

Next one: Cloudflare has an edge in Israel. And has workers who were in Unit8200 before 1991 (per linkedin) and ISRALIES. Who uses Cloudflare? MANY MEDICAL ORGS. Also, Cloudflare is just like MITM (CDN SSL termination). So does ISRAEL SPIES read all your MEDICAL data?

> "To think otherwise is completely naïve" (real qoute from the article btw = no proof)

What a sham article. Trump's TruthSocial level. But hey, most upvoted today (440+ points). And no point on reporting to mods also, I just get copy paste reply.

Right now, you can and should do it.

See https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/themen/digitalis...

> We should instead elect officials that can deal with the “Neuland” of the digital age and have some technical chops and don’t immediately cave in when there is some money to be made

Yes, but I don't think this will happen during our lifetimes. Especially since the Gematik has shown again and again that they can't be trusted with it

Why would they use it internally?

Internally, you have the Hospital Information System where you can look up all the informations you need.

I can just say I know the inside of one of Germany's biggest Hospitals, since I'm a Doctor. And requesting Patient Data or giving it out to other Parties is unfortunately a Task that Doctors still have to do on their own

And for communication with the outside world it's down to Fax, Phone or Letter.

And that will be replaced with KIM in the future

Agency is what those people you call trolls don't have. Leave them be, you don't want to end up lynched.

> I don't believe any of the above makes me antisemite. It is very typical of agents of a certain agency to frame like that though.

An astonishing pair of sentences.

> Israelians

Israelis

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/bondi-beach-gunshots...

MIT students have different loyalty than to a fascist government like Trump's administration. The political situation in USA is also not like the one in Israel (which country is a direct result of the outcome of WWII and hatred by nazi-Germany, who are in constant fight with their neighbors). It isn't a fair comparison. One should also take into account that Mossad's way of operating is aggressive.

The English article doesn't mention this, but vulnerabilities were found in Zivver. See my comment elsewhere in the thread referring to the Dutch version of the article.

I am... really not sure why this comment is getting downvoted? It's not really a conspiracy theory so many years after Snowden now, is it?

It helps when majority of US congress is composed of highly convicted Zionists or on AIPAC payroll because they don't wanna risk being JFKd.

At this point it's all a i-controlled spy operation everywhere in the US. Just check where the main "cyber-security" firms come from. They're just fronts for spy operations.

It's not inevitable. It's up to us in a shared world to decide how to govern ourselves and live our lives. Not to be at the whims of a small group of powerful strangers.

I think it’s much more likely they’re creating honeypots as contractors. There is a lot more money in surveillance than privacy

Could the same not be said about the US?

I suspect it'd have a different spin put on it.

Based on your wiki almost all of those are from 2010 era and shut down long ago

The US has always had a number of grey market scammy businesses like those too. Lots of countries do.

I remember when the IDF guy did this right after getting arrested at DEFCON earlier this year!

https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-israeli-cyber-official-...

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-865532

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/19/how-was-an-alleged-...

https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/israeli-official-plea...

this alleged sex offender just appears remotely for his court appearances lol. I wonder if he will attend prison remotely too? Maybe an RC robot will serve his sentence and he can look out the bars through a camera and VPN from Israel.

> You can be discriminated against a job based on health records.

Just to make this clear, probably EU-wide, you can't legally be discriminated against. However, it's gonna be hard to prove leaked data won't be illegally integrated in e.g. ATS models, or was attributed as skill issue when it popped up during manual background checks.

Although, infectious disease like HIV or dystopian scenarios like eugenics are probably the classical discrimination examples for these privacy implications, I don't think they are very likely to be discriminated against (outside of jobs where discrimination is legal and require disclosure anyway, e.g. health workers, food industry etc.). It's easy to dismiss those worries, since most people aren't affected. But common issues with mental health (e.g. depression), hidden disabilities and chronic disease (e.g. PMS), or potentially severe recurring disease (e.g. cancer) realistically are going to be much more impactful. Everything which statistically increases chances to fall out the work force due to health reasons - especially in combination with strong labor protections.

I once had to threaten to resign from a job (in the EU, pre-Data Protection Act) over the data handling of evidence of one of the things in your comment.

I think this has been something people have had an instinct about forever, and the only reason I had to threaten to quit was because of a misunderstanding of the level of data safety involved; put simply it was not common knowledge that socket connections could be snooped and that targeting a popular service would be easy for a malicious person to do. (This was before SSL was efficient or easy to manage, and in the days when only payment screens were encrypted).

Once the message was across, everyone's objectives were aligned again.

Health information is deeply private because disease is entangled with shame/weakness/vulnerability/taboo/intimacy.

Actually, please do ask silly questions! The overwhelming response has been interesting