... which has been circulating through the blogs for a few days, gets its fair share here. It starts harmlessly in the comments with the usual considerations about personal data and where does the email address come from, what are the personalized links for in the "anonymous" survey - so quite normal and healthy behavior from the people.
Then at some point the providers (the Knallgrauen) jump in. And then something comes up that leaves me speechless:
And now a few personal words: I find the excitement here a bit puzzling. We (twoday.net) have always been very careful with data in the past and have always tried to be careful and act in the best interest of the users with such topics. Every day, personal rights are handled much more carelessly elsewhere and no one cares. Here, however, everyone can say how they imagine research, including beautiful publication dreams, which are unfortunately far removed from any reality.
Sorry, but what? So the concerns about the passing on of email addresses for a purpose to which the owner of the address has not explicitly consented are responded to with the flimsy argument "we are always soooo good and the others are soooo bad, and anyway, you are all dreamers"? It's quite astonishing how much arrogance can fit into a small paragraph ...
This casts a not very positive light on the relationship of the Knallgrauen to the protection of the personal data of the users. And no, a survey is nothing that is necessary for the operation - no matter how flimsy the justification with which it is pulled out by the hair.
And it was not just a slip of the tongue, as another comment from the Knallgrau direction further down proves:
in other discussions I can personally not understand the excitement about some things. Data protection is important, but not all boys are bad. So I am probably not to be counted among the cautious species, maybe I have just been lucky so far.
Yeah, yeah, data protection is always taken too seriously. Sorry, Knallgrau, but data protection is always taken too lightly, which is why such idiots like you just brush it aside. It's much more important to carry out a survey that has been planned for months (from which the visitor has nothing, but only the evaluator and the recipient of the result - just by the way) and not to cancel it because of such trivialities, as you write in the same comment:
the interesting thing about communication is that there is always too little of it. The sensitive environment (due to previous surveys) was clear to us, the survey has been planned and prepared for months (very thoroughly prepared) and we did not want to cancel the project for such reasons.
Exactly. Screw data protection concerns, they are just "such reasons" and nothing important, like, for example, another insignificant survey about the blogosphere (in which the visitor is asked about their income to improve the provider's services - ah yes) ...