Imgur and your privacy - the true insanity revealed!

Following the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the EU recently, I tried to exercise my right to data privacy when visiting the IMGUR website. Little did I realise just what a rabbit hole that exercise truly is.To save you the job of counting, here is the low down (settings are sorted into the various headings below):Information and storage318 individual settings that have to be toggled to OFF with 100 opt outs that require you to visit their website.Personalization247 individual settings that have to be toggled to OFF with 79 opt outs that require you to visit their website.Ad selection, delivery, reporting281 individual settings that have to be toggled to OFF with 126 opt outs that require you to visit their website.Content selection, delivery, reporting180 individual settings that have to be toggled to OFF with 77 opt outs that require you to visit their website.Measurement248 individual settings that have to be toggled to OFF with 134 opt outs that require you to visit their website.That's a GRAND TOTAL of:1,274 individual settings to toggle to OFF with 516 opt outs that require you to visit their website. And this is just to view a single image on IMGUR.TOGGLE BUTTONSYou would expect a simple 'opt out of all data collection' button, but there isn't one. What there is, is a piece of text (not even a button) saying 'ALLOW ALL'. This is clearly ON by default. What you may not realise is that this text option is a toggle to switch off all the permissions. Sneaky feckers!I would expect that by law IMGUR is required to have a 'toggle button' to de-select all the settings, but IMGUR do not want to make it obvious. They have succeeded. If you are fooled by this first hoop to exercising your rights to privacy (and I imagine near 100% to be fooled), the next step appears to be to individually toggle each setting to 'OFF'.INDIVIDUAL TOGGLESThat's 1,274 toggles across 5 different pages of settings. It seems that once you prohibit one company, it likewise removes permissions in the other settings too, but there are many companies that appear only in one page of the settings, perhaps trying to sneak past the eye of the user, since it can seem that all your settings are now toggled to OFF when they are not. Scroll down and you'll see there are many many exceptions on each page.PAGE FREEZESIf this ridiculous exercise to exercise your legal right to privacy wasn't enough, I personally experienced the PAGE FREEZING four times when trying to go through the list and toggling each individual setting to OFF. All functions on the page did not work after it froze.The only answer was to use the BACK key and to reload the IMGUR page to get the settings again and start from scratch.This might have happened more than 4 times, but I started using a different method to count the individual settings, with cut & paste and Excel, so who knows...OPT OUT REQUIREMENTAs IMGUR informs us, 'Depending on the type of data they collect, use and process and other factors including privacy by design, certain partners rely on your consent while others require you to opt out."Yes, some partners require you to click the link next to their name to opt out via their own website. Sigh.... There are 516 such opt outs (some will be repeated, no doubt, but how do you keep track?!). What did I have planned for the rest of the summer?So, I thought I'd visit one such site to see what that entails.TESTING THE OPT OUTFirst, they required that I accept THEIR COOKIES to even access their pages. No options to opt out of data collection on that page!! The next step was to read through the very long text talking about data collection and privacy, trying to find the 'opt out' option. Sure enough, it was near the bottom of the page, and was not a button, but a text link.Click the link and it basically reloaded the page. Okay, scroll further down and there's another text link next to a status reading, which happily informs me that I am currently NOT opted out. Click the link and nothing happens. Reload page, try again. Still says I am not opted out. Several attempts, no difference. First attempt at opting out via a website = turture + failure!ADDITIONAL QUESTIONSThere are links to NAI, DAA and EDAA opt outs in the IMGUR settings page. These are various non-compulsory initiatives that try to make opting out of data collection a little easier. They record your privacy options and for ethical data gatherers, they will check to see if you have opted out. There are almost no ethical data gatherers outside of government institutions.This is supposed to save you having to go to each of these 516 separate opt outs. However, after visiting the first site, one of the first pieces of information was that this data collector did NOT abide by the NAI, DAA or EDAA codes. In other words, you cannot trust these opt out options as protecting your privacy.A week or so ago, I already went through this rigmarole, but as with many people, I regularly delete my cookies, and so had to go through the process once again. I have had to toggle settings on many many external websites that have been linked to through Reddit. Some are straight forward, many are not.There are other options of course, such as VPN, but they add to the existing high costs of accessing the internet. Not to mention, many of these vendors are not respecting the spirit of the GDPR legislation, only the strict letter of the law. One might be able to argue that IMGUR are breaking the law by having a toggle DISALLOW button to actually read ALLOW ALL in spite of it's current status.EXTRA INFOI did this run-around on an Android Chrome browser. The desktop version appears to be much easier, though it too has its own issues. As my tablet is my main media consumption device, I think this drill down might be relevant to others also. via /r/technology https://ift.tt/2Mh5e7K