Maintaining privacy not so easy

There’s so much to worry about right now, protecting your privacy shouldn’t be another source of anguish.

Heck, it’s such a crucial matter, President Trump has threatened to shut down Tiktok in the United States, where it has more than 100 million users, because he says its data collection practices are a threat to national security.

I’ve been stewing on this since being contacted the other day by a mediator and lawyer named Marty Olinick, who was having difficulty understanding the privacy policies of various companies and how to exercise rights granted under California’s privacy law.

“One site that’s especially ridiculous is Yahoo, where you simply can’t find a way to opt out,” he told me.

Olinick, 76, added: “This should be something that’s very easy to do. But I’m not going to waste a half-hour or more trying to figure it out.”

Again, this guy’s a lawyer, accustomed to documents containing dense prose and jargon. His past gigs have included overseeing deals to license music on behalf of major media companies.

If he’s having difficulties, how hard are things for ordinary civilians who may not have an advanced degree or experience with the minutiae of content management?

“I think companies are deliberately making it as hard as possible,” Olinick said.

I don’t disagree. But I figured I’d better take a closer look at Yahoo’s privacy practices to see what set him off.

Yahoo, in case you don’t know, is now a subsidiary of Verizon Communications. The Yahoo privacy policy includes the usual corporate pledges to respect and safeguard users’ privacy. “Yahoo is committed to gaining your trust,” it says. The company has a funny way of showing that. Things get even more frustrating if you go the trouble of rooting around for the privacy dashboard and find a link to “Do Not Sell My Info,” which one could reasonably expect will prevent Yahoo from selling your info. Nope. It takes you to a page asserting “Verizon Media does not sell information that identifies you on its own, like your name or email address.” In the next breath, though, it says “we do share other identifiers with partners for product, service and advertising reasons.”

The disclosure goes on to admit “under the California Consumer Privacy Act, some of this sharing activity may be considered a ‘sale’ that you have a right to opt out of.”

So Yahoo/verizon says it will never, ever sell your information to others, except it may “share” it for “advertising reasons,” and this sharing in fact may constitute a sale under the law.

You could get whiplash trying to parse a sentiment like that.

Yahoo clouds the process by not offering a distinct means to opt out. Instead, users are given the choice to pick whether they “agree” or “disagree” with the statement “continue sharing under California law.”

Presumably clicking “disagree” is opting out, but Yahoo/verizon makes that ambiguous. Nor does it notify you after clicking “disagree” (which I had to do twice) you’ve opted out of data sharing.

I relayed Olinick’s experience and my own findings to Verizon.

A spokeswoman for the company, asking to be identified only as “a Verizon Media spokesperson,” responded to most of the points, but only on background, which means I can’t share what she said with you.

She didn’t seem to appreciate the irony of insisting on her own privacy while addressing my privacy questions.

Tell me again, Mr. President, why I should be freaked about Tiktok.

At the very least we can make the opt-out process much, much easier.

I propose a one-stop shop for opt-outs similar to the do-not-call list maintained by the Federal Trade Commission.

Our national politicians have proved themselves distinctly useless when it comes to keeping the American people safe from a deadly pandemic.

It doesn’t seem like too much to ask they at least spell out, and implement, privacy practices that put people, not corporations, first.