I know they’ve been around since the GDPR came into effect, but I’ve suddenly noticed a sharp increase in the cookie prompts on web pages which have a second “legitimate interest” page. Some of these have an “object all” button, but plenty require you to manually opt-out of sometimes hundreds of ad-trackers.
The cynic in me assumes this is a legal loophole, whereby they can claim legitimate interest in your data in order to do exactly what they were going to do anyway (which is not what the legitimate interest feature of the GDPR is for) without being required to give you a “reject all” button.
- Am I being overly paranoid or is this exactly what’s happening?
- Does blocking all third-party cookies (something your browser should be able to do by default) negate all this need to reject anyway?
- If not then what’s the solution?
If you do have an answer then please state if it applies to EU/UK or other, non-GDPR-respecting countries!
Legitimate interest is their interest, not yours.
The interest might be theirs but the “legitimate” part absolutely has to incorporate a written justification somewhere within the the depths of the mandated records of processing activities that explains why the business/institution couldn’t possibly do what they’re doing without processing that particular piece of user data. “I want that” is not legitimate interest in the sense of Article 6.
Agree. But practically they may claim using such data to improve their systems. This is a valid LI justification. But still it provides no benefits to users to whom those data are collected from, while at the same time increases their risks (such as mishandling of their data - which is common since it’s very difficult to handle data 100% correctly).