[TeMPOraL]

Yup. Today I opened my fridge wondering if I'll see a note about an updated privacy policy inside.

It's ironic seeing that the law was in power for the last 2 years, but companies woke up only last week. A lot of those mails are only information, with no (clearly marked) link to a consent panel, so I assume that me ignoring them means they won't be allowed to spam me anymore.

[varjag]

You're joking, but my fridge did hand me a GDPR notice in the morning:

https://twitter.com/varjag/status/998496423019778048

[TeMPOraL]

Wow. That's the funniest thing I've seen this week.

Beats the schadenfreude I'm having with some of the IoT lightbulbs no longer working for EU customers - a problem which actually impacted a friend of mine. See: https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/999619364541394944.

EDIT: 2 friends now. I wonder how many more bought those lightbulbs...

[Symbiote]

Anyone who bought these lightbulbs should return them to the retailer for a full refund.

[retSava]

The yeelights are typically bought on eg Aliexpress. I have mine with the local network developer functionality enabled, here's to hoping they will still work with that at least.

[frockington]

That'd be an entertaining help desk conversation. "No the product is still functional, but my country made it too much of a hassle for them to operate in my region"

[jacquesm]

That's fairly incredible. A friend bought a Samsung smart TV, but after reading the EULA (which of course they spring on you after powering it on rather than to inform you at the point-of-sale) decided to forego the smarts in the TV. Those things track just about everything, your fridge apparently is still relatively mellow.

Did it open without you clicking 'ok'?

[varjag]

Yeah, I think it was pertaining the Samsung network account only. For secondary features like calendar sync, app control etc.

[jacquesm]

I meant the fridge ;)

[varjag]

Sure enough! But we don't discuss important things in the kitchen from now on.

[emptyfile]

Funniest thing I saw this year. Brave new world.

[Saaster]

It's a common misconception, but consent is only one of the 6 recognized lawful basis for processing specifically recognized by the GDPR, and a company may contact you when any one is applicable. For example, if you have an existing business relationship via a contract (you bought something), or the business has a legal obligation to inform you of changes, or the nebulous "legitimate interests" basis on behalf of the business.

Those emails which ask you to click to continue to receive marketing are a red flag that those companies did not have any legal basis previously, or they're just cargo-culting other companies even though they already have a perfectly valid basis to keep in touch (like you being a an actual customer). Check out your favorite big-company SaaS signup today (like, Jira), you will still typically not see any explicit consent checkboxes, because due to a customer relationship it is not needed.

[megaman22]

If you're in the US, it's often not a bad bet to backburner compliance with ill-conceived, fuzzily-defined law that is going into effect 2+ years in the future. Chance are good that a new crop of House of Representatives members will have been voted in during the intervening time, possibly flopping the majority, and the provisions of the statute in question will either be reversed, endlessly delayed, or mangled out of all recognition from their original form.

From that perspective, this whole trainwreck makes considerably more sense.

[oblio]

We have a ton more parties and the majority are not religiously/fanatically opposed to each other. Also, they tend to shift over time, nobody battens down the hatches as the Democrats or the Republicans do. They have to be flexible to survive.

In the US one of the sides could start killing people in the street and they'd still end up in Congress...

What this means is that for many topics it's easier to reach consensus and the opposing party, now in power, is much more likely to continue a policy the general population likes.

[csomar]

> so I assume that me ignoring them means they won't be allowed to spam me anymore.

In my case, many of them assumed silence as accepting the new terms.

> We encourage you to take the time to review our revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. By continuing to use Microverse on or after May 25th, 2018, you acknowledge our updated Privacy Policy and agree to our updated Terms of Use.

> What do I have to do? You don't need to do anything as these changes will automatically apply to you. If you don't want to accept the changes, you can unsubscribe below and we will remove you from our database.

> Opt out: If you have not already opted out of receiving marketing communications from Bugsnag and would like to, you can do so at any time.

> We are clarifying that all of our users, no matter where they are located, may contact us at any time to review the personal data that we have of theirs, request that we delete that data, or withdraw their consent to receive promotional announcements from us.

> The updated Privacy Policy automatically comes into effect for all Envato users on 25 May 2018. So your continued use of the Envato sites from that date will be subject to it.

[Cthulhu_]

That is implied in some of the e-mails - that is, they're asking you for explicit opt-in permission to keep mailing you. Mind you the old required 'unsubscribe' link was often adequate, but I don't mind this either.

The flood of emails is a nice reminder of how many services you're signed up with, too. Some even with multiple e-mail addresses.

[TeMPOraL]

I was particularly surprised seeing names I don't even recognize. Turns out that some of my one-off on-line purchases were handled by companies with names completely different than the names of the shops they put on-line.