--- title: 'Privacy shaming: Baukjen' url: 'https://cooper-davis.net/blog/privacy-shaming-baukjen' markdown: 'https://cooper-davis.net/blog/privacy-shaming-baukjen.md' date: '2026-10-13' description: 'This is the first post in a new series that I''m calling "Privacy shaming" - where I name and shame the companies that are completely ignoring data protection law, to shine a light on their shady practices. To kick off the series, we start with: Baukjen. Who are Baukjen? Baukjen are a clothing co…' --- # Privacy shaming: Baukjen ## [Privacy shaming: Baukjen](https://cooper-davis.net/blog/privacy-shaming-baukjen) 13th Oct 2026 This is the first post in a new series that I'm calling "Privacy shaming" - where I name and shame the companies that are completely ignoring data protection law, to shine a light on their shady practices. To kick off the series, we start with: Baukjen. ![Baukjen.png](https://cooper-davis.net/user/pages/05.blog/privacy-shaming-baukjen/Baukjen.png) ## Who are Baukjen? Baukjen are a clothing company. They market themselves as "women's responsible fashion" (if such a thing is possible). They have lots of links and logos at the bottom of their website advertising that they are a B Corp, a living wage employer, and a recipient of the UN Global Climate Action Award. They can certainly talk the talk. ## Why am I complaining? - [Their "privacy policy"](https://www.baukjen.com/pages/privacy-cookie-policy) (not that it is worthy of such a name) is woefully inadequate. It doesn't include... well, anything! It talks about cookies, and gives a very brief hand-wavey statement about sharing data with "trusted third parties" and that's it! I've quite literally never come across such a large company with such an inadequate privacy policy. - They track you around the web. When you visit their website they instantly [use a load of web APIs](https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/) to uniquely identify you based on your browser. This is literally thousands of metrics that they piece together to follow you around the web (well, I guess they're following you around the web, but because their privacy policy is literally non-existent I actually have no idea what they're doing with it). - They ignore your cookie choices. A nice banner pops-up when you visit their site, you click "reject all", and they give you cookies anyway! When I visited them they gave me: - [\_\_cf\_bm](https://cookiedatabase.org/cookie/cloudflare/__cf_bm/) which Cloudflare uses to identify that I'm not a bot, - [\_\_thoughtmetric\_uid](https://thoughtmetric.io/) a third-party marketing attribution tool for e-commerce, - [\_pandectes\_gdpr](https://pandectes.io/) a Shopify plugin that "Makes Your Shopify Store GDPR Compliant \[...\] in Minutes" (oh the irony), and - Some boring shopping cart and localization ones. ### Some bonus bits Whilst this isn't exactly privacy related, their [terms and conditions](https://www.baukjen.com/pages/terms-conditions) are so misanthropic that they made me wonder if I was reading a parody! Some of my highlights: - They won't let you re-sell any of their products. - If you tag them with `#YesBaukjen` in your social media photos then they can do whatever they want with them, no exceptions. - They reserve the right to ignore you if you reply "STOP" or "HELP" to their SMS marketing. - You can pay in installments - but it'll cost you up to 35.99% APR! ## How did they respond? Obviously the first thing I did was try to fill in their contact form to ask for a copy of their privacy notice. This didn't work, perhaps because my web browser blocks a lot of their tracking and bot-protection scripts, so I sent them an email. Then followed an exchange that went a bit like this: > **Ari**: Here's a link to your privacy policy. It doesn't include all this information that I want to know. Can you share this information? > > **Customer service representative**: Sure, here's the link to our privacy policy. > > **Ari**: That's the link I sent you! Can you just reply to this email with the information? > > **Customer service representative**: We've removed you from our mailing list 😀 > > **Ari**: I didn't know I was on your mailing list! Can I have that information I asked for though? I'd like you to raise this as a formal complaint to your named person responsible for data protection now please. > > **Customer service representative**: I've forwarded on your request. > > *\[CRICKETS\]* ## Why do I care? Tracking and analytics tools are incredibly powerful, and with great power comes great responsibility. Nowadays these [web analytics companies know you better than your friends do](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418680112)! They're making money by selling their observations about me. If companies are going to buy and sell our data, analyse our behaviours and interests, and track us around the web, then the very least they could do is tell us about it. In fact, they're legally obliged to. Our regulator in the UK, the ICO, doesn't have the capacity to keep an eye on every web-shop to make sure they're behaving themselves, so doing the right thing depends on trust. A "B Corporation" is supposed to be extremely trustworthy, but they're not just coming up short, they're taking the piss! ## What can you do about it? Not much. You can ask to see their privacy policy, and complain to the ICO when it falls short. But the ICO is unlikely to take enforcement action when they have [bigger fish to fry](https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/). You can name and shame them on your blog in the hope that they might care (I'm not optimistic, but it'll help me get closure). Or, you can shop somewhere else - somewhere that respects your rights as a person, not just treats you as a "consumer". ### Protecting yourself What you can do is make it harder for companies to track you illegally as you browse their websites. The EEF maintains a list of simple things you can do to [cover your tracks](https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/learn): - Install a tracker blocker - I use [Privacy Badger](https://privacybadger.org/), [uBlock Origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/), and [JShelter](https://jshelter.org/). - Disabling Javascript - this breaks a lot of websites, so isn't an option for most people. - Changing browser settings from defaults - this can help with tracking cookies and the like, but it varies widely by which browser you use. - Using a fingerprint resistant browser - I use a heavily customised version of Firefox, but Tor and Brave have better defaults. ## Comments [ Previous Post](https://cooper-davis.net/blog/flushing-with-rainwater-choosing-your-butt) --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Posts](https://cooper-davis.net/blog.md) - Next: [Flushing with rainwater: choosing your butt](https://cooper-davis.net/blog/flushing-with-rainwater-choosing-your-butt.md)