Adobe’s Deception and Responsibility in Data Protection: The Truth Behind Experience Cloud Services

The company says it is not a data controller in providing Experience Cloud services, but instead “a processor of the data collected by Experience Cloud customers.”

Guilty! Perhaps not of the original accusation but of deception or facilitating crime, but they are guilty and they know it.

The companies that purchase these services would themselves be data controllers and would therefore be responsible for the cookies placed, including what data is collected and what that data is used for.

I’ve heard this excuse too many times. Adobe knows perfectly well what’s going on.
It’s no different than every criminal’s excuse “I didn’t shoot, I just bought the gun and drove the car.” They know that they supply tools that are mainly suitable for breaking the law, the fact that a gun has a “not for crimes” sticker makes no difference.

I also already know what the other parties (such as the tax authorities) are going to say: “We trusted the expertise of our suppliers.”

The question is whether this product was purchased directly from Adobe or whether there are three other parties in between. We purchase ready-made IT components from numerous suppliers who also work with components that they do not really oversee.
Each party shifts all responsibility to their own supplier and customers. In each intermediate contract, the agreements, conditions and responsibilities become even more vague.

The painful reality is that quite a lot of what we have come to believe is actually not possible, or has so much legal overhead that it is actually unaffordable. All parties can do is stick their fingers in their ears and close their eyes tight and hope that no one reads the fine print.

It’s like that bakery with a wood-fired oven without fire insurance, the insurance costs more than the store earns. The only way to stay open is to have no insurance and hope that nothing ever goes wrong. If things go wrong, the place will burn down and the baker will be in debt for the rest of his life. Rationally speaking, you shouldn’t do that… but people are not rational and gamble on everything going well.

To be clear, I think both parties (Adobe and the customers) are wrong, but are partly forced to do so by money and the law. Customers want something and trust their suppliers to make that possible within the limits of the law. The supplier can only offer it so cheaply by not taking responsibility itself.

However, the customer does not have the expertise to do it properly themselves. If they had the knowledge and the money, they would not need the supplier. In that respect, the tax authorities are a painful example. Such an organization should have that expertise in-house. But after all the cuts to the tax authorities, they probably cannot do much more than purchase ready-made services from the cheapest supplier.

We will hear this story very often. Just about every cloud service in the world is in exactly the same situation. They all realize very well that they have no control over what customers do with their systems and so they place all responsibility on the customer. However, the customer does not have the knowledge or resources to do it themselves, if only because they have no idea how everything works technically.

The pressure of money and procurement rules ensures that projects are carried out with as little knowledge as possible. Without knowledge you see no dangers and risks, then a lot is possible for little money.

[Reactie gewijzigd door CAPSLOCK2000 op 14 december 2023 14:39]

2023-12-14 12:05:53
#Adobe #denies #foundations #claim #illegally #collects #personal #data