I never consent to give my data away or being tracked, but how do you deal with so called legitimate interest? I tried several times to untick them but it is a long list (in fact at the bottom there is a “vendors” link with even longer, much longer list. It took me 10 minutes to get to the bottom of it once).

My questions:

-how can we trust these so called legitimate interests when they are self defined by companies whose business model relies on your data?

-how can we find out what these legitimate interests are and what data it collects?

-are such companies controlled in any way?

-is this kind of consent form compliant with EU gdpr? (normally opt out is to be as easy as opt in, and there is no “refuse all” for these so called legitimate interests).

-what are your strategies against such sites tracking you? Or am I just being paranoid?

The sheer amount vendors is daunting, the Internet really turned into crap

Edit: when clicking Preferences at the bottom the content of the legitimate interested is spelled out for each vendor, so this replies one of my questions.

  • @fluckx
    113•21 days ago

    Legitimate interest is just bullshit.

    Can I have your:

    • wallet
    • emails received
    • telephone number
    • pin code
    • visa card numbers
    • browser history
    • home address
    • dates you won’t be home
    • alarm code

    I too am legitimately interested in this data.

    • Kairos
      36•20 days ago

      Why are you asking for their consent? You’re using their personal data on the basis of your legitimate interest.

  • LazaroFilmEnglish
    64•21 days ago

    They’re legitimately interested in your data.

  • @Aceticon
    40•20 days ago

    Legitimate Interest is an attempt at working around the GDPR using a loophole in the ruling meant to permit processing of data in situations such as when a business has a trading relationship with a client.

    However the legal clarification from the EU Commission says: “Your company/organisation must also check that by pursuing its legitimate interests the rights and freedoms of those individuals are not seriously impacted, otherwise your company/organisation cannot rely on grounds of legitimate interest as a justification for processing the data and another legal ground must be found.” (see here) and there is a “right to privacy” in EU law.

    So supposedly that nearly endless list of “partners” (read: advert providers, trackers and other assorted businesses who make money from breaking people’s privacy) cannot use legitimate interest to track you as that would break your right to privacy.

    That said, in practice they probably do, and until they get fined hard they’ll keep on doing it, so as others said, don’t used a Chrome-based browser and use a good Ad Blocker add-on.

  • @[email protected]
    26•21 days ago

    1. Depends on the threat model but usually you don’t trust them. It’s as simple as that

    2. I think the legitimate interest has something to do with giving the data to the government when legally required but it can have other meanings too. Good luck with finding out. Some of them won’t tell the truth even if officially asked (unless you work for the government)

    3. Everything is somewhat controlled but in terms of data collection and sharing it is absolutely not (e. g. the users’ HIV status data on Tumblr or whatever the thing is called)

    4. Idk about that

    5. Regular protection like Tor, VPN, anti-fingerprinting etc

    6. I wouldn’t say you are being too paranoid

    7. Yes the internet has turned into a horrible place

    • @ForgotAboutDre
      14•21 days ago

      Legitimate interest is just an out to get around tracking users.

      I wouldn’t be surprised is many data trackers don’t pay attention to any of the permissions and agreements. It’s hard to validate they aren’t in compliance and it’s hard for most people to even challenge these businesses.

      Even if these businesses where legally challenged they can just close the business. Then take the same software and start a new business doing the same thing. If you look at the amount of companies you information is shared with under legitimate interests it can be in the order of hundreds.

      • merde alors
        6•21 days ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised is many data trackers don’t pay attention to any of the permissions and agreements. It’s hard to validate they aren’t in compliance and it’s hard for most people to even challenge these businesses.

        organizations like la quadrature validate and challenge those businesses. Europe is relatively strict on this subject.

    • Joël de Bruijn
      5•21 days ago
      1. It’s not gdpr compliant in the way shown here or IAB TCF uses it.

      Legitimate interest is a sort failsafe which can be used to cover certain exceptions.

      • the datacontrollor must have an exceptional situation, so not on a regular basis.
      • the balance between personal and business interest must be considered carefully under case by case basis.
      • the dataprocessor isn’t the one doing the consideration

      Automating all this is kind off against all the above.

  • BoisZoiEnglish
    24•20 days ago

    OP:

    posts about tracking and not consenting to give data away

    also OP:

    uses Google Chrome

    • @BeatTakeshiOP
      28•19 days ago

      Wrong, that’s Mulch. Uninstalling and deactivating Google apps is the first thing I do. Android system webview is the tricky one, but Mulch has a webview too. Still the default one manages to creep in sometimes, and deactivating it breaks things that call it specifically. Edit: there is a system webview setting under Developers tools, but Mulch’s does not appear there

  • @[email protected]English
    21•21 days ago

    There’s no such thing as legitimate interest. Reject what you can, block everything else with adblockers.

  • @[email protected]
    20•20 days ago

    Just autowipe cookies on pageloads. Use fast rotating vpn, tunnel through tor twice, run computer in ram only, remove all storage devices.

  • @[email protected]
    16•21 days ago

    Legitimate interest is a way for the vendors to not need your confirmation. In general, your right to privacy is valued against the vendor’s right to operate. The most often used example is advertisement: in general, vendors are allowed to advertise, as they want to operate and sell their products. But you have a right to your data (e.g. mail adress, home adress, interests…). So courts have to value what is more important. Another example that most people would agree is that clubs want to show what happens in the club, so they publish pictures from their activities (interest of club to show they are active vs personal right to your image). As not every case goes to court, most vendors see their interest as more important and interpret “legitimate” interest rather loosely. So in general, the idea of legitimate interest is compliant with the GDPR, although I believe most sites use it too liberal.

  • @[email protected]
    12•19 days ago

    fair enough, i have a legitimate interest in always blocking trackers and advertisements in every device i own too

  • voxel
    9•20 days ago

    IANAL, but iirc if you’re in the eu, legitimate interest is not legal basis for data processing but they may still store it for later use if you ever agree to one of these

    • Atemu
      12•20 days ago

      Your browser cannot block server-side abuse of your personal data. These consent forms are not about cookies; they’re about fooling users into consenting to abuse of their personal data. Cookies are just one of many many technological measures required to carry out said human rights abuse.

    • @[email protected]
      1•20 days ago

      I just accept all cookies. But I use Firefox Focus which deletes all cookies and browsing history every time I close it!