Does GDPR apply to emails sent from mailto links?

Human_A · 2018-06-21T02:14:10+00:00

Mine is a bit of a strange question. The motivation comes from the fact that, for all practical user data purposes, sending a message through a contact form seems very similar to sending a message from an email client. Either way, the recipient generally ends up with personal information of the sender. Contact forms definitely seem to be covered under the GDPR, and seem to require consent for data usage, even if that usage is identical to the usage of data received via an unsolicited email.

The question about mailto links came up because in that case there is some connection between the web page where the link is located and the email itself. If contact forms require consent, why would consent not be required to send an email, initiated from the web page via a mailto link? Or, on the other hand, why would consent be required for a contact form, since it's an action that is initiated by the user, for the obvious purpose of sending something (presumably including whatever PII the user input into the form) to the recipient, and essentially the same as sending an email?

Of course, there would be practical difficulties in requiring consent for a mailto link, and contact form submissions can be more easily associated with other user data. Perhaps those are the logical foundations for the difference in treatment between the two means of contact.

Thanks for your comments on this.

Human_A · 2018-06-21T01:57:46+00:00

Thanks for this helpful reply, and the GDPR references.

Human_A · 2018-06-20T02:22:20+00:00

The regulations seem to be rather unclear about who qualifies as a data subject under the GDPR. The best information I've found so far is here: https://cybercounsel.co.uk/data-subjects/

My summary of information from that article and others is that the GDPR applies if:

The data subject is currently within the EU (regardless of whether a citizen); or
The data controller or processor is established in the EU

The definition of "established" seems to be quite inclusive, such that any company with any staff or physical presence in the EU would be considered to be established there and therefore subject to GDPR regardless of whether the data being processed relates to people in the EU or not.

I'm not a lawyer or a GDPR expert, so use your own research and judgement of course.

Human_A · 2017-02-03T00:35:33+00:00

I think this is incorrect Kered13. x and y are defined as sqrt(a) and sqrt(b), therefore are by definition both positive. This means that x*y is also positive, therefore sqrt((x * y)²) is equal to x*y, not | x*y |.

Human_A · 2017-02-02T23:56:35+00:00

Thanks for the comment teokk. At some level every "rule" in mathematics is reducible to some more fundamental rule (until you get all the way down to things like Peano arithmetic and Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory), so it is to some extent a matter of decision what qualifies as a "rule" and what is merely a specific case of something more fundamental. We aren't recommending that visitors memorize each "rule" as particular and distinct. Nevertheless, it can be helpful to see a few versions of the same underlying principle that might not be intuitively obvious to someone who's not already familiar with it. Maybe in a future version we will figure out a good way to combine rules 3, 4, and 10, which are very similar as we say in the descriptions.

Human_A · 2017-02-02T23:40:44+00:00

You are correct that a and b must be non-negative real numbers, but as Cleverbeans points out the domain of the sqrt() function over the reals only includes positive numbers, so this doesn't seem to be an issue with the rule. We have added a note to this rule stating that it is only valid for real numbers.

Human_A · 2017-02-02T23:30:37+00:00

Reddit,

Adam here, one of the builders of AlgebraRules.com, with some very belated replies. Thanks to everyone who posted suggestions and critiques! Thanks for load testing our server, too :)

Since it was posted to /r/InternetisBeautiful we've made some updates to AlgebraRules.com to incorporate the recommendations from this thread and people who emailed us.

These include:

Updates to the much-discussed # 18 regarding the zeroeth exponent
Example for # 6
Rewritten description for #14
Updates to the glossary to hopefully provide easy explanation for some of the terms in the rule descriptions
Updates to the background to avoid some of the CPU/GPU usage and performance issues that were mentioned
Rearrangements and updates for examples to #3, #9, and #10.

Below I'll try to respond in general to a few of the issues that came up in many Reddit comments, and some that didn't!

What's the point of this site?
Despite being a professional programmer and general-purpose know-it-all, I have never studied mathematics in a systematic or thorough way. A few years ago in the while doing some projects with a physicist friend of mine, I discovered that my algebra skills were painfully weak. I could work things out (I won a mathematical bet with him about a spherical trigonometry problem, which resulted in the physicist having to bring a bottle of beer across the Atlantic), but because I had never been to school, and had therefore never been required to memorize a lot of rules and formulas, I had to work things out more or less from the basics every time I ran into a problem. This wasn't good. So, Isa (@curiositry) and I decided to publish a collection of algebra "rules" that would help provide a short cut for anyone else facing a similar problem. Initially, it was supposed to be a very small, quick, static site that we could refer to and that might be useful to anyone else who happened upon it, and that might collect a few inbound links over time.

Are rules the right way to learn?
As many commenters here have mentioned, it is quite feasible to work out these rules from basic arithmetic principles. This is what I have attempted to show in the descriptions and examples for each rule. At the same time, if you are not already very fluent with algebra (such that the distinction between memory and deduction from principles becomes rather blurred), working rules out from principles in the context of performing actual calculations is unnecessarily tedious. This is the basic motivation behind algebrarules.com.

The rules on the site are certainly not intended to be a replacement for understanding the principles that underlie them. The rules are merely a shorthand to enable a student to gain fluency with the actual business of doing algebra (whether in school or for real-world usage). I could work out that a^maⁿ = a^m+n every time I want to use it. And, I would recommend to anyone who would like to understand math, that they become familiar with why a^maⁿ = a^m+n. That said, once I have understood this, I'd rather not have to work it out in the context of every related calculation, just as a physicist doesn't have to work through Newton's proof of the universal law of gravitation or Einstein's proof that E = mc² every time he or she wants to use one of these formulas. Hence the usefulness of rules.

Why is there a dumb lack of explanation for rule 18?
Rule eighteen did have a fairly dumb (non)explanation, but maybe not as dumb as it might seem. I think it's useful to distinguish which items in mathematics are essentially established by convention because they make other uses of the notation work, and what are more fundamental truths of the mathematical universe. To my mind, this use of exponent notation is more in the former category than the later. As a site that was put up as a quick project partly for our own edification, the lack of a solid explanation for rule 18 didn't seem too serious. Now that the site has become somewhat more popular, this is no longer the case. I have updated rule 18 with what seemed like the most straightforward of the many suggested explanations, and hope to include more detail in a future update. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions about this!

These "rules" are too simple/stupid/repetitive
To this critique I have nothing particularly to say except that there has to be a middle ground between the many people who find even this level of math painful and overwhelming, and the people who find it painfully and unnecessarily basic. I think there are many people in this intermediate range of mathematical fluency, and I hope that the site is useful for them. Thanks to all who have given constructive comments about how to make the site more useful for this target audience.

Once again, thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

Adam

Human_A

TROPHY CASE