The EU has substantially expanded the definition of personal data under the GDPR. To reflect the types of data organisations now collect about people, online identifiers such as IP addresses now qualify as personal data.
You can still see it in the admin section, though. I mean...it would be necessary to see the IP information. How else would you ban people?
Online handles are also protected now. So "The Baron of Culture". How crazy is that? I don't know the significance of any of this but from what little I do know, it seems absurd.
I'm reminded of the Chysler LeBaron. Perhaps Old and cold remembers this, being an American and all. I don't believe that the car was sold in the UK.
It was my first car. According to Wikipedia, by 1987 (my model) it was categorised as a "personal luxury car". I don't buy that for one second. There was nothing luxurious about this. It was a regular car.
It was my sister's car but then she got a new (used) car. So my mother says to me, "Good news! You got a new car! Your sister's!"
She wasn't even joking. She thought that this was good news. So after taking a moment to process what I was hearing I deadpanned, "I don't want it." But it was decided. She was too busy celebrating. My sister got a new car so that meant that I got her shitty hand me down car.
My father bought this car for my sister and there wasn't even any consultation. He just went out and bought a car and said, "Here you go, this your car now. Good news."
So there was precedent for this bizarre behaviour. I sympathise with my sister. Times were different, perhaps. My father grew up in a Father Knows Best 1950s environment. So you go out and buy a car for your daughter without asking her what kind of car she wants...it's what people did. I guess.
You see this in films from the 80s. A father gets his daughter a car as a gift with a giant bow on the roof and the daughter hugs him and whatnot. So I don't know. Maybe I'm over-thinking this. I mean, you don't consult people over gifts.
But a car...I still think consultation is appropriate. Just because of the scale of the gift. A car is a serious purchase. It's not you get a pair of rollerskates and say, "Well, these suck" and you throw them in the back of the closet, never to be seen again. With a car, you have to use it day in and day out whether you like it or not.
Anyway, I didn't like the car. It was a piece of crap. But I drove it for a few years. I don't know how many. Three maybe. I don't remember any major breakdowns. Then I got a new (used) car and sold this LeBaron to some dude through a newspaper ad.
So that's that. A lot of painful stories involving that car but I just don't want to share. They're embarassing. I was never caught fucking a dog in there or anything like that but just vaguely embarassing stories that I don't even want to think about.
Just like when I was doing test drives with people who responded to the ad, people got weirded out by me. It was just because I didn't know how to do a test drive and wasn't a sociable guy. Stuff like this.
Anyway, yeah, no more IP addresses because of data protection, I think. A sad day for louche people everywhere.
Message Thread
« Back to index