Europeans' health data sold to US firm run by ex-Israeli spies

The details around that are a significant source of friction.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Android phone contracts seem strangely cheap.

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?

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/ )

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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.

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.

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.

Apple devices aren’t secure either.

>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.

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.

best of luck

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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-...

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

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.

Israelis

An astonishing pair of sentences.

Its complete normal behavior that people hire people they know, just look at hiring practices across all tech companies. As it is a completely normal behavior for a CEO to brag about their company.

Is Google an Indian intelligence asset because it's run by an Indian CEO and has quite a few Indian execs? How about Microsoft?

So please address the content now.

Unfortunately I don't think we even have words for this. For example, "militarized" which you used encompasses an enormous set of customs, values, abilities, etc. Is there a single word or couple of words that could be used to refer to what I described above?

We also got 2000 years of Europeans blaming Jews by association with no proof which is exactly the beautiful cultural tradition celebrated in this article

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 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.