BitsaboutMe’s mission is based on the right to data portability as enshrined in the EU GDPR and also in the Swiss DSG. In this context, every person has the right to a machine-readable copy of their data. Unfortunately, the machine-readable copy does not go far enough, as it allows data holders to make access to this copy arbitrarily complicated.

Data holders have no intrinsic motivation to make data accessible and deliberately place hurdles in the way of their customers exercising their right to data portability. This cumbersome user experience has resulted in low adoption of our broad data importer offering from Google, Facebook, Netflix, Paypal, and many others. As a result, we have decided to pause these services from October 2023 and focus entirely on shopping data and electronic receipts.

The deliberately poor user experience of data imports is the biggest barrier to widespread use of personal data. New EU legislation is now trying to close this gap: Article 6 (h) of the Digital Markets Act of 2020 requires so-called gatekeepers to provide “continuous and real-time access.”

We are monitoring further developments in this area and will decide in due course whether to reactivate additional data importers.

In the meantime, here’s a list of data export instructions for the major importers:

Google Takeout

Facebook

Netflix

Amazon