It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call. It's like some joke from gonzo journalism come to fruition. I don't know what the answer is, but as a person who's been suicidal, for me it wasn't a hotline. It's even more fitting, if not kind of perfect, that said hotlines farm your data and sell it. :chef's kiss: what else is there to say. Like just about everything else, callous people make money while vulnerable, sensitive people pay up. Beautiful world we live in ;). Please drink responsibly!
To me, the hotline is an absolute joke and one of the last things I would do if I were contemplating harming myself. I've often wondered if there is hard data showing it is effective overall, or whether it's just bandwagon group think run amok.
I have lost a number of friends to suicide, and as a result I spent a significant amount of time thinking about what could have been done to have helped them before it was too late. In nearly all cases, it was pretty well thought out and not a spur of the moment thing. In some cases, they even took steps to prevent people from discovering their plans. So anecdotally, a suicide hotline would not have helped at all.
Based on some searching though, it seems like there is data showing that it helps on the whole. I guess for people who are having a spur of the moment thought, it might be potentially helpful. However I also found some people saying that seeing the prolific messages about calling the hotline when searching for information about things really pushed them away and somewhat backfired.
I guess ultimately this is a very complex issue with no one size fits all solution. If I ever get to a point where I no longer have to work, this is a cause I would love to work on for the people that tend to think it through more and less spontaneous.
As another, intermittently suicidal person, I have never received helpful support from a hotline. In fact, I have never managed to speak to another human on the phone at all.
Out of four hotline calls in my life, mostly as an older teenager, I waited for >1 hour in every case, listening to pre-recorded “please continue holding, we will get to you” messages and elevator music, before giving up.
The only time I contacted a human it was via a text chat, and the interaction was laughably shallow — they hit me repeatedly with condescending, “reflective listening”-style questions and basically offered no depth or consideration to my situation, or me as a person.
If these services demonstrably save lives then that’s great, but they did absolutely nothing for me.
What do you advocate for to help people contemplating suicide? WHat do non-Western culture do to "deal with suicidality"? The issue is when the hotline is selling the data and not that the hotline itself exists.
The NYT released an article[0], sorry paywalled, that discusses the effectiveness of the 988 hotline in lowering the number of suicides where it is available. Sadly, because of the joke that is mental health coverage in the US, that's as good of news as I've got for you. Mental health coverage isn't even available on the open market AMA (Obama Care), so 988 is the best we can offer.
A quick sweep of the lowest 20 countries in suicide and the most obvious thing that can be teased out is they're by vast majority extremely conservative societies where family and religion (mostly Islam) would likely dominate the goals of any person living there (with a couple exceptions).
I wonder if having a pretty rigid, straightforward, and achievable set of life goals lowers suicide. This isn't to say that's the best way to live, but I could understand how it may make people more satisfied with their life.
I've heard the Dutch one is is a little better. The ones in the USA aren't likely to do much more than call police to put a mental hold on you, during which the hospital will rack up so many bills that it would make anyone suicidal. And then yay, your gun rights gone forever, so if you are suicidal in part because you live in a dangerous impoverished shithole good luck defending yourself afterwards!
> Many people in mental health crisis fear that if they dial 988, law enforcement might show up or they might be forced to go to the hospital.
> But getting sent that kind of "involuntary emergency rescue" happens to around 1% of callers, suggests new data from Vibrant Emotional Health, the administrator of the 988 Lifeline for suicide and mental health crises.
I don't think that's the right way to consider your odds of involuntary committal. It really depends on what you say in the calls. The more immediate and serious the danger the more likely you are to be involuntary committed. The caller range is quite large.
Gun rights are generally not gone forever. Federal law bars people adjudicated mentally defective or formally committed to a mental institution, neither of which include a temporary mental hold for suicide watch. State laws vary, but none of them have a law where a single temporary hold means "gun rights gone forever." Some states let people go buy a gun the day they are released from suicide watch, despite how irresponsible that sounds.
The temporary can easily turn into an adjudicated one. Happened to one of my friends during a nasty divorce, the high-IQ husband knew all the buttons to press to the state and kept fabricating to the state that the suicidal ideation was ongoing (it never existed in the first place) and then they committed my friend based on that. He was then successful in getting my friend's ability to defend herself removed so that she would be defenseless.
So from what i understand the only way your gun rights are "gone forever" is if a court ordered you to go to a mental hospital. If it's just a 911 call and a ride to the hospital (every trip to the "grippy sock hotel" I've ever seen), that does not apply and your gun rights are not removed federally. Some states have "red flag" laws but to my understanding those are temporary and end either after a time period or a court petition. I'm curious what laws you're talking about in the US that would take your gun rights for a suicide call.
E.g. NY is not friendly in this scenario depending on the type of permit and the type of hold. An involuntary hold will impact your right to have a gun.
Involuntary commitment. Happened to a good friend of mine during a nasty divorce, the husband made up a suicidal story and my friend was committed without the court appointing her a lawyer to defend herself. She's struggling to get her rights back, it is apparently possible, but they're gone forever until you spend a lot of money on lawyers so it's true it's not strictly the case you can't get them back but they default to staying gone forever.
Seems like one of those situations where damned if they do, damned if they don't, isn't it? Like if someone is in immediate crisis what do you expect them to do?
I feel like if someone is calling a line, they are looking for intervention. If someone cries for help and the response is ensuring that someone doesn't fearmonger on Hacker News, I feel like that would be a problem.
"And then yay, your gun rights gone forever"
Gun owners are much more likely to kill themself with said gun than to ever defend themselves in any way, and anyone who has ideations should be the last person to want a gun. And suicide mostly afflicts white middle-aged males, most of whom don't live in "dangerous impoverished shitholes". I doubt the correlation is more than random.
This kind of thing is why I wouldn't touch a site like that. Websites, service providers, and internet-connected software that collects data from you can't be trusted even a little, so I avoid them to the greatest degree I can. The rule of thumb is that anything you tell to them, or any data you have put in their custody, is at risk.
unsure why you are being downvoted. this is universally true. your data is either being actively shared with partners, or inadvertently shared in the form of weak security, exploits, wide-open buckets, etc.
I thought Europe was more careful about things like this. This is pretty bad, these people are vulnerable and they're just mining they're data for profit.
I guess it didn't help enough to stop them from doing it in the first place--it just helped them stop once they were caught. Sure, it's a step up from other places where there is literally no consequence for this kind of sharing.
In this context, a social construct. In terms much more popular a century ago, a 'nation': A people who have some similarities in how they approach, in this case, a combination of 'privacy aspects in regards to business' and 'to what extent America can be trusted to be of similar social construct and thus likely to end up between company policy and legal principles at the same or a similar conclusion'.
Or to make it even simpler: The EU's written and unwritten rules, along with countries that closely track such things, such as Norway, Switserland, Iceland, etc.
I do want to mention though, while this is bad, I feel like we're singling out a site. Fact is, I've seen more places where this doesn't happen. Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one. And while I've done my best to work at those places to get it fixed, there is a lot of inertia and simply ignorance. I'm not talking about small places either. I'm talking about non-tech places that make their profit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The inertia, the fact that no one else seems to care at such a place. It's an issue. Then I'm always the odd one out and looked at funny. When it's fixed no one really gives a shit and now I'm "that guy". A small form of resentment stays in these people.
Just mentioning my experience. It's stuff like this kind of apathy that gets us a world where a place like a suicide hotline just ignorantly does this kind of stuff. Or at least, that's my hypothesis: it's ignorance and apathy.
There's probably not a lot of data on this which is why I'm sharing this anecdata. I hope it's better than nothing.
Other websites with similar societal impacts and responsibilities have already been covered in Dutch news before, from governments to health information websites to healthcare providers.
The 113 suicide prevention hotline works together with professionals but it's not an official health care provider as far as I know.
There are probably plenty of similar websites with similar problems, but 113 is well known within the Netherlands so it's a poignant example to use in the media.
Getting media coverage on this will probably make these organizations do better, at least until the next conversion improvement marketeer gets access to the backend.
Their chat service uses something called "sprinklr.com", blocked by my filters automatically, which calls itself "The definitive AI‑native platform for extraordinary customer experiences".
I have a similar outlook atm as one of "those guys."
Everything takes so long, nobody is held accountable. The most likely result of pushing for any type of positive outcome for basically anything is some form of punishment or social degradation.
And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.
I will also note that most of the things I see "being corrected" these days are entirely fictitious.
As an example is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. They tossed out a valid complaint about Shaw (during Rogers buyout) for jurisdictional reasons. Then they are on the news making odd statements about (exclusively) OpenAI not being honest about using your data?
It's all a show it seems. I figured it needs to get a qhole lot worse before it can get any better.
I have moved to internal tooling creation and have airgapped a machine/tool each month this year so far. Just a laptop and my social phone remain networked.
There are times where working on the inside to make changes is a valid strategy, but it is definitely trending down, especially if there's just a single voice. The only other option is the public shaming route, but they've pretty much gotten to the point of being able to survive that as well now. It takes significant numbers to move the needle, but there have been recent examples of companies reacting to negative press.
"Dutch suicide prevention hotline shares visitor data with tech companies" is certainly one way of saying "Dutch suicide prevention hotline website uses Google Analytics".
You say that like there's a difference. You say that like the detail of data that Google Analytics farms is acceptable. You say that like what Google does with the data is acceptable. Just because companies want the data doesn't mean they deserve it.
> This website uses cookies
> We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features
I know there are some services that send GDPR data removal requests on your behalf. I wonder if there are any similar services that send messages like "Why the hell do you need these cookies?" to website operators.
I hardly ever see these cookie banners as my browser blocks most of them, but I still think it would be great to rub the idea of "Your website doesn't need any non-technical cookies" in website operators' faces.
I have lately thought about how the only tech I am interested in now is to assist programming. Programming for programming. Eternal yak shaving. And a big part of that is that end-user digital technology is a dystopia. No, not dystopic, not going in a bad direction. Just dystopia. Vultures and thugs at every corner preying on every “convenience” and mistake that you could make.
It is also good for mindless entertainment in between the real things that sometimes happen. And listening to music.
For example version control. That’s the kind of the thing that I read about and want to program myself. Things that have nothing to do with end-user software.
Sounds like analytics data. The screen recordings of visits I particularly but. I despise when companies do that and act as if it's a normal thing. It might help your support when a user reports an issue but it's a massive violation of a user privacy and most users wouldn't have any idea it was even possible.
> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline.
This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-(
What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.
> “At this moment, we are investigating what happened, how this could have occurred, what the potential impact has been, and what our next steps are,” the spokespersons aid. They didn’t say whether the trackers would be turned on again
I hope the investigation that they are saying in the articles goes swiftly to really find out the real reason as to why this ended up happening in first place and the reasons behind it are made public sooner rather than later.
See my comment. My hypothesis is: ignorance and apathy that results in incompetence.
Using GA4 is just the normal thing right?
Look in a room full of marketing experts and they will say yes or shrug.
Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.
To answer: no GA4 is not just the normal thing. There is no normal. It's the dominant thing and it invades privacy like hell and the whole thing needs to be thought about in a different way. I'd advice almost everyone to stop smoking that Google crack pipe and roll your own or find an analytics friendly vendor.
Yea I got a bit rhetorical there, apologies for being a bit fed up with this situation.
Yes, my comment was published just one minute after yours so I only saw your comment after mine and I appreciated reading your comment (& upvoted it)
> Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.
But if that's the case, are we saying that when the website was being created, it was being created with no-one who was security expert or let alone security adjacent people?
This is what I had refused to believe because in my opinion, more due diligence within the structure should've taken place and if there was no-one competent within the team, then why not hire one who is?
I can't help but feel frustrated, this is probably gonna negatively impact people who have talked on such suicide prevention websites.
Literally these websites is to create a safe space and for a person to be heard, if one introduces the concept of tracking or even feeling tracked, I can't help but feel frustrated as to why, why not hire people who know about security especially for such websites and especially with these laws. I am unable to understand this to be more specific.
Marketing people like the features they're getting, and Google and Meta are dominant, so big that they're the default, in the same way that we talk about github being the default option, and "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM / (big tech company of your choosing)". I wouldn't dream of saying they should choose something else, without researching and guaranteeing that nothing they'd ever want from GA (and they may not know everything they'll want in the future right now) is missing in the alternative. In a role (marketing) that's completely out of my wheelhouse. So I don't even bother.
Not all websites are created with IT in the loop. And sometimes even if IT is in the loop, then they aren't privacy/security conscious enough.
I got to see this first-hand being part of a marketing department. IT was explicitly left out of the loop. Though that was a Fortune 500 company. I'm not saying it's the same situation for the organization of this article.
My point simply is: IT is not always in the loop when a site gets created. And I bet "not always" is putting it mildly.
Tribalism is a thing. Or at least, I call it tribalism.
"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome". It's that kind of stuff, unfortunately.
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice.
When it comes to companies' wrongdoing, I'm starting to not care whether it's incompetence or malice anymore. When money and/or lives are at stake, incompetence is shaped like malice. We need to have a new word for this kind of "deliberate stupidity" and punish it just like we punish intent to do wrong.
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.
Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and to make sure the website owner should be able to see how many people visit the website, and probably 90 of those developers will default to setting up Google Analytics, just by "instinct".
People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.
> People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.
Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
I mean, perhaps Google analytics might make sense anywhere else except this but perhaps you are right that there might be many dev's who don't know anything except G.A.
But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
There are many alternatives present which value gdpr and can be self hosted easily.
I am unsure of what should be done if its case of ignorance rather than malice, malice can be fixed but ignorance is a greater systemetic issues and there are websites which help in fixing the gap of knowledge (like the ones I linked, esp alternativeto has genuinely helped me personally in many things) but the issue is that people might not even know or perhaps even bother with these websites too.
So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
> Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
It's just a random example what marketers and owners think about when choosing an analytics platform, not specific to a suicide prevention website. But also, think that the website owner has some "Goal" which in this context might be "Someone calls and didn't kill themselves", then they'd try to setup their analytics platform to give them concrete numbers and metrics about this "sales funnel".
> But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
Me too, and I don't disagree with anything what you write.
But practically, among less-technical users, imagine your typical Windows dev who've written C# code for two decades and gets excited when Microsoft holds press-conferences, these people aren't seriously gonna re-evaluate their choices, they go with what they already know in 99% of the cases.
> So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
Best you can do is be honest, forthcoming and help them understand if it feels like they don't understand. Ultimately, people won't try to solve things they don't see as issues, so the first step to take might be to clearly identify and show them what issues the current approach as, with concrete evidence and context.
I think it's more incompetence than malice. It's just such a standard thing for engineers to throw analytics tracking in every website/product they build. Although I am surprised not one person realised this might be a bad idea given the sensitive nature of the site.
> Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one.
That's the shameful thing really. Yeah it's pretty common to have (GDPR violating) cookies and 'share all analytics' settings on by default with "privacy is very important to us" statements on the website. As "one of those guys" I see this all the time. For a commercial business it's just eye rolling, but these kinds of social good companies really should be held to a higher standard. With that standard just being "privacy by design please".
The websites' feedback form gave me a "try again in !minutes" error so frankly I think the dev team is malicious by incompetence. It's a very pretty site though, so at least there's that.
It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call. It's like some joke from gonzo journalism come to fruition. I don't know what the answer is, but as a person who's been suicidal, for me it wasn't a hotline. It's even more fitting, if not kind of perfect, that said hotlines farm your data and sell it. :chef's kiss: what else is there to say. Like just about everything else, callous people make money while vulnerable, sensitive people pay up. Beautiful world we live in ;). Please drink responsibly!
To me, the hotline is an absolute joke and one of the last things I would do if I were contemplating harming myself. I've often wondered if there is hard data showing it is effective overall, or whether it's just bandwagon group think run amok.
I have lost a number of friends to suicide, and as a result I spent a significant amount of time thinking about what could have been done to have helped them before it was too late. In nearly all cases, it was pretty well thought out and not a spur of the moment thing. In some cases, they even took steps to prevent people from discovering their plans. So anecdotally, a suicide hotline would not have helped at all.
Based on some searching though, it seems like there is data showing that it helps on the whole. I guess for people who are having a spur of the moment thought, it might be potentially helpful. However I also found some people saying that seeing the prolific messages about calling the hotline when searching for information about things really pushed them away and somewhat backfired.
I guess ultimately this is a very complex issue with no one size fits all solution. If I ever get to a point where I no longer have to work, this is a cause I would love to work on for the people that tend to think it through more and less spontaneous.
[delayed]
As another, intermittently suicidal person, I have never received helpful support from a hotline. In fact, I have never managed to speak to another human on the phone at all.
Out of four hotline calls in my life, mostly as an older teenager, I waited for >1 hour in every case, listening to pre-recorded “please continue holding, we will get to you” messages and elevator music, before giving up.
The only time I contacted a human it was via a text chat, and the interaction was laughably shallow — they hit me repeatedly with condescending, “reflective listening”-style questions and basically offered no depth or consideration to my situation, or me as a person.
If these services demonstrably save lives then that’s great, but they did absolutely nothing for me.
"Young adult suicide rates dropped after U.S. launched 988 hotline":
* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/988-crisis-hotlin...
"Suicide deaths dropped 11% from projected rate in the first two years of the revamped lifeline"
* https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/22/988-hotline-linked-11-pe...
What do you advocate for to help people contemplating suicide? WHat do non-Western culture do to "deal with suicidality"? The issue is when the hotline is selling the data and not that the hotline itself exists.
The NYT released an article[0], sorry paywalled, that discusses the effectiveness of the 988 hotline in lowering the number of suicides where it is available. Sadly, because of the joke that is mental health coverage in the US, that's as good of news as I've got for you. Mental health coverage isn't even available on the open market AMA (Obama Care), so 988 is the best we can offer.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/science/988-youth-suicide...
The hotline is isn't "selling" the data.
The hotline installed analytics software to help them do their job.
Do "non-Western culture have a better solution to suicidality?
A quick sweep of the lowest 20 countries in suicide and the most obvious thing that can be teased out is they're by vast majority extremely conservative societies where family and religion (mostly Islam) would likely dominate the goals of any person living there (with a couple exceptions).
I wonder if having a pretty rigid, straightforward, and achievable set of life goals lowers suicide. This isn't to say that's the best way to live, but I could understand how it may make people more satisfied with their life.
To guess that people in countries with lower suicide are more satisfied is one possibility.
Satisfaction isn't even conditional on most of the rest of what I said, so even if the guess is wrong it doesn't change my statement much.
I've heard the Dutch one is is a little better. The ones in the USA aren't likely to do much more than call police to put a mental hold on you, during which the hospital will rack up so many bills that it would make anyone suicidal. And then yay, your gun rights gone forever, so if you are suicidal in part because you live in a dangerous impoverished shithole good luck defending yourself afterwards!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-988-call-the-police-data-s...
> Many people in mental health crisis fear that if they dial 988, law enforcement might show up or they might be forced to go to the hospital.
> But getting sent that kind of "involuntary emergency rescue" happens to around 1% of callers, suggests new data from Vibrant Emotional Health, the administrator of the 988 Lifeline for suicide and mental health crises.
If anything I did had a 1% chance of involuntary committal I would stop doing that thing immediately.
I don't think that's the right way to consider your odds of involuntary committal. It really depends on what you say in the calls. The more immediate and serious the danger the more likely you are to be involuntary committed. The caller range is quite large.
Does that include “untreated suicidal ideation”?
Gun rights are generally not gone forever. Federal law bars people adjudicated mentally defective or formally committed to a mental institution, neither of which include a temporary mental hold for suicide watch. State laws vary, but none of them have a law where a single temporary hold means "gun rights gone forever." Some states let people go buy a gun the day they are released from suicide watch, despite how irresponsible that sounds.
The temporary can easily turn into an adjudicated one. Happened to one of my friends during a nasty divorce, the high-IQ husband knew all the buttons to press to the state and kept fabricating to the state that the suicidal ideation was ongoing (it never existed in the first place) and then they committed my friend based on that. He was then successful in getting my friend's ability to defend herself removed so that she would be defenseless.
So from what i understand the only way your gun rights are "gone forever" is if a court ordered you to go to a mental hospital. If it's just a 911 call and a ride to the hospital (every trip to the "grippy sock hotel" I've ever seen), that does not apply and your gun rights are not removed federally. Some states have "red flag" laws but to my understanding those are temporary and end either after a time period or a court petition. I'm curious what laws you're talking about in the US that would take your gun rights for a suicide call.
This heavily depends on the state.
E.g. NY is not friendly in this scenario depending on the type of permit and the type of hold. An involuntary hold will impact your right to have a gun.
Involuntary commitment. Happened to a good friend of mine during a nasty divorce, the husband made up a suicidal story and my friend was committed without the court appointing her a lawyer to defend herself. She's struggling to get her rights back, it is apparently possible, but they're gone forever until you spend a lot of money on lawyers so it's true it's not strictly the case you can't get them back but they default to staying gone forever.
Just curious, but did this person have a history of emotional lability plus previous (voluntary) outpatient treatment?
> if you are suicidal in part because you live in a dangerous impoverished shithole good luck defending yourself afterwards!
Is realistically "gun ownership" a plus in this scenario?
Seems like one of those situations where damned if they do, damned if they don't, isn't it? Like if someone is in immediate crisis what do you expect them to do?
I feel like if someone is calling a line, they are looking for intervention. If someone cries for help and the response is ensuring that someone doesn't fearmonger on Hacker News, I feel like that would be a problem.
"And then yay, your gun rights gone forever"
Gun owners are much more likely to kill themself with said gun than to ever defend themselves in any way, and anyone who has ideations should be the last person to want a gun. And suicide mostly afflicts white middle-aged males, most of whom don't live in "dangerous impoverished shitholes". I doubt the correlation is more than random.
You really think that legal prohibition on gun ownership is more a difference in life-and-death due to murder risk than suicide risk?
when society gets too big, sociopathy and opportunism win out
If nto illegal, it seems clear that is inappropriate.
This kind of thing is why I wouldn't touch a site like that. Websites, service providers, and internet-connected software that collects data from you can't be trusted even a little, so I avoid them to the greatest degree I can. The rule of thumb is that anything you tell to them, or any data you have put in their custody, is at risk.
unsure why you are being downvoted. this is universally true. your data is either being actively shared with partners, or inadvertently shared in the form of weak security, exploits, wide-open buckets, etc.
I thought Europe was more careful about things like this. This is pretty bad, these people are vulnerable and they're just mining they're data for profit.
It is, and that is why the company took action:
> After being confronted with this research, Stichting 113 temporarily suspended all measurement and analysis tools on its website.
It does not mean that this cannot happen, but the regulatory framework helps stop it.
I guess it didn't help enough to stop them from doing it in the first place--it just helped them stop once they were caught. Sure, it's a step up from other places where there is literally no consequence for this kind of sharing.
They are not mining the data profit; they are mining the data for managing their website.
Europe is more careful. But people will break the law.
People make mistakes.
What is Europe?
In this context, a social construct. In terms much more popular a century ago, a 'nation': A people who have some similarities in how they approach, in this case, a combination of 'privacy aspects in regards to business' and 'to what extent America can be trusted to be of similar social construct and thus likely to end up between company policy and legal principles at the same or a similar conclusion'.
Or to make it even simpler: The EU's written and unwritten rules, along with countries that closely track such things, such as Norway, Switserland, Iceland, etc.
Yea this is bad.
I do want to mention though, while this is bad, I feel like we're singling out a site. Fact is, I've seen more places where this doesn't happen. Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one. And while I've done my best to work at those places to get it fixed, there is a lot of inertia and simply ignorance. I'm not talking about small places either. I'm talking about non-tech places that make their profit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The inertia, the fact that no one else seems to care at such a place. It's an issue. Then I'm always the odd one out and looked at funny. When it's fixed no one really gives a shit and now I'm "that guy". A small form of resentment stays in these people.
Just mentioning my experience. It's stuff like this kind of apathy that gets us a world where a place like a suicide hotline just ignorantly does this kind of stuff. Or at least, that's my hypothesis: it's ignorance and apathy.
There's probably not a lot of data on this which is why I'm sharing this anecdata. I hope it's better than nothing.
Other websites with similar societal impacts and responsibilities have already been covered in Dutch news before, from governments to health information websites to healthcare providers.
The 113 suicide prevention hotline works together with professionals but it's not an official health care provider as far as I know.
There are probably plenty of similar websites with similar problems, but 113 is well known within the Netherlands so it's a poignant example to use in the media.
Getting media coverage on this will probably make these organizations do better, at least until the next conversion improvement marketeer gets access to the backend.
Their chat service uses something called "sprinklr.com", blocked by my filters automatically, which calls itself "The definitive AI‑native platform for extraordinary customer experiences".
I suppose there's always the phone number.
I have a similar outlook atm as one of "those guys."
Everything takes so long, nobody is held accountable. The most likely result of pushing for any type of positive outcome for basically anything is some form of punishment or social degradation.
And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.
I will also note that most of the things I see "being corrected" these days are entirely fictitious.
As an example is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. They tossed out a valid complaint about Shaw (during Rogers buyout) for jurisdictional reasons. Then they are on the news making odd statements about (exclusively) OpenAI not being honest about using your data?
It's all a show it seems. I figured it needs to get a qhole lot worse before it can get any better.
I have moved to internal tooling creation and have airgapped a machine/tool each month this year so far. Just a laptop and my social phone remain networked.
> And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.
I feel you. I wish the world was a better place, but here we are. I don't know what else to say about it. I feel you.
There are times where working on the inside to make changes is a valid strategy, but it is definitely trending down, especially if there's just a single voice. The only other option is the public shaming route, but they've pretty much gotten to the point of being able to survive that as well now. It takes significant numbers to move the needle, but there have been recent examples of companies reacting to negative press.
"Dutch suicide prevention hotline shares visitor data with tech companies" is certainly one way of saying "Dutch suicide prevention hotline website uses Google Analytics".
You say that like there's a difference. You say that like the detail of data that Google Analytics farms is acceptable. You say that like what Google does with the data is acceptable. Just because companies want the data doesn't mean they deserve it.
I get what you mean, but it's still perfectly accurate.
> This website uses cookies > We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features
I know there are some services that send GDPR data removal requests on your behalf. I wonder if there are any similar services that send messages like "Why the hell do you need these cookies?" to website operators.
I hardly ever see these cookie banners as my browser blocks most of them, but I still think it would be great to rub the idea of "Your website doesn't need any non-technical cookies" in website operators' faces.
Hate this
Who are the founders, their funders and their motivation?
I have lately thought about how the only tech I am interested in now is to assist programming. Programming for programming. Eternal yak shaving. And a big part of that is that end-user digital technology is a dystopia. No, not dystopic, not going in a bad direction. Just dystopia. Vultures and thugs at every corner preying on every “convenience” and mistake that you could make.
It is also good for mindless entertainment in between the real things that sometimes happen. And listening to music.
> I have lately thought about how the only tech I am interested in now is to assist programming. Programming for programming. Eternal yak shaving.
Could you give some specific examples?
I'm not OP, but I took their comment to mean things like internal dev tooling. Kind of stuff platform engineering focuses on
For example version control. That’s the kind of the thing that I read about and want to program myself. Things that have nothing to do with end-user software.
Sheesh, reality is more cynical than any bleak humorist could ever write.
Why am I all of a sudden getting ads for rope and large amounts of Tylenol??
Sounds like analytics data. The screen recordings of visits I particularly but. I despise when companies do that and act as if it's a normal thing. It might help your support when a user reports an issue but it's a massive violation of a user privacy and most users wouldn't have any idea it was even possible.
only one of the most vulnerable groups in our community.
Sucks to suck.
> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline.
This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-(
What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.
> “At this moment, we are investigating what happened, how this could have occurred, what the potential impact has been, and what our next steps are,” the spokespersons aid. They didn’t say whether the trackers would be turned on again
I hope the investigation that they are saying in the articles goes swiftly to really find out the real reason as to why this ended up happening in first place and the reasons behind it are made public sooner rather than later.
See my comment. My hypothesis is: ignorance and apathy that results in incompetence.
Using GA4 is just the normal thing right?
Look in a room full of marketing experts and they will say yes or shrug.
Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.
To answer: no GA4 is not just the normal thing. There is no normal. It's the dominant thing and it invades privacy like hell and the whole thing needs to be thought about in a different way. I'd advice almost everyone to stop smoking that Google crack pipe and roll your own or find an analytics friendly vendor.
Yea I got a bit rhetorical there, apologies for being a bit fed up with this situation.
Yes, my comment was published just one minute after yours so I only saw your comment after mine and I appreciated reading your comment (& upvoted it)
> Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.
But if that's the case, are we saying that when the website was being created, it was being created with no-one who was security expert or let alone security adjacent people?
This is what I had refused to believe because in my opinion, more due diligence within the structure should've taken place and if there was no-one competent within the team, then why not hire one who is?
I can't help but feel frustrated, this is probably gonna negatively impact people who have talked on such suicide prevention websites.
Literally these websites is to create a safe space and for a person to be heard, if one introduces the concept of tracking or even feeling tracked, I can't help but feel frustrated as to why, why not hire people who know about security especially for such websites and especially with these laws. I am unable to understand this to be more specific.
Marketing people like the features they're getting, and Google and Meta are dominant, so big that they're the default, in the same way that we talk about github being the default option, and "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM / (big tech company of your choosing)". I wouldn't dream of saying they should choose something else, without researching and guaranteeing that nothing they'd ever want from GA (and they may not know everything they'll want in the future right now) is missing in the alternative. In a role (marketing) that's completely out of my wheelhouse. So I don't even bother.
Not all websites are created with IT in the loop. And sometimes even if IT is in the loop, then they aren't privacy/security conscious enough.
I got to see this first-hand being part of a marketing department. IT was explicitly left out of the loop. Though that was a Fortune 500 company. I'm not saying it's the same situation for the organization of this article.
My point simply is: IT is not always in the loop when a site gets created. And I bet "not always" is putting it mildly.
Tribalism is a thing. Or at least, I call it tribalism.
"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome". It's that kind of stuff, unfortunately.
> See my comment.
No, I refuse being told what to do.
It wasn't meant that way as a comment ;-)
Everything in life is optional.
> Stichting 113 has temporarily disabled all measurement and analysis tools.
It seems that it is only temporary.
> “We realize that visitors must be able to trust that their privacy is protected and regret that concerns have arisen regarding this.”
They also regret that "concerns have arisen". No other regrets have been mentioned.
Right? "We don't regret that we did this, just that people are mad about it"
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice.
When it comes to companies' wrongdoing, I'm starting to not care whether it's incompetence or malice anymore. When money and/or lives are at stake, incompetence is shaped like malice. We need to have a new word for this kind of "deliberate stupidity" and punish it just like we punish intent to do wrong.
> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.
Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and to make sure the website owner should be able to see how many people visit the website, and probably 90 of those developers will default to setting up Google Analytics, just by "instinct".
People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.
Not just instinct, I'd need to be able to justify the choice against any potential downside of not choosing the default option.
> People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.
Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
I mean, perhaps Google analytics might make sense anywhere else except this but perhaps you are right that there might be many dev's who don't know anything except G.A.
But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
https://alternativeto.net/software/google-analytics/?license...
https://openalternative.co/alternatives/google-analytics
There are many alternatives present which value gdpr and can be self hosted easily.
I am unsure of what should be done if its case of ignorance rather than malice, malice can be fixed but ignorance is a greater systemetic issues and there are websites which help in fixing the gap of knowledge (like the ones I linked, esp alternativeto has genuinely helped me personally in many things) but the issue is that people might not even know or perhaps even bother with these websites too.
So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
> Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
It's just a random example what marketers and owners think about when choosing an analytics platform, not specific to a suicide prevention website. But also, think that the website owner has some "Goal" which in this context might be "Someone calls and didn't kill themselves", then they'd try to setup their analytics platform to give them concrete numbers and metrics about this "sales funnel".
> But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
Me too, and I don't disagree with anything what you write.
But practically, among less-technical users, imagine your typical Windows dev who've written C# code for two decades and gets excited when Microsoft holds press-conferences, these people aren't seriously gonna re-evaluate their choices, they go with what they already know in 99% of the cases.
> So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
Best you can do is be honest, forthcoming and help them understand if it feels like they don't understand. Ultimately, people won't try to solve things they don't see as issues, so the first step to take might be to clearly identify and show them what issues the current approach as, with concrete evidence and context.
I think it's more incompetence than malice. It's just such a standard thing for engineers to throw analytics tracking in every website/product they build. Although I am surprised not one person realised this might be a bad idea given the sensitive nature of the site.
> Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one.
That's the shameful thing really. Yeah it's pretty common to have (GDPR violating) cookies and 'share all analytics' settings on by default with "privacy is very important to us" statements on the website. As "one of those guys" I see this all the time. For a commercial business it's just eye rolling, but these kinds of social good companies really should be held to a higher standard. With that standard just being "privacy by design please".
The websites' feedback form gave me a "try again in !minutes" error so frankly I think the dev team is malicious by incompetence. It's a very pretty site though, so at least there's that.
This kind of crap is why I am moving all of my tech stack to the US
Smart. Europe is a circius.