Privacy @lemmy.ml BeatTakeshi @lemmy.world 6 mo. ago

Legitimate interest?

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.

84 comments

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.
- Why are you asking for their consent? You're using their personal data on the basis of your legitimate interest.
- Hey, these faceless corporations deserve your info. /s
They’re legitimately interested in your data.
Your honor, it was not a rape, it was my legitimate interest in sex.
- "If it's a legitimate interest, the browser has ways to try to shut that whole thing down"
  
  How was the browser dressed?
- I mean depending on the context it might be a decent defense
  
  I've seen judges let offenders off light on worse arguments. Unfortunately.
  
  Your choice of words was absolutely terrible. There is no such thing as a decent defense of rape. Now, an effective defense in our busted legal system? That's a whole different story. But "decent" does not apply in cases of sexual assault and violence. Ever.
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.
Depends on the threat model but usually you don't trust them. It's as simple as that

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)

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)

Idk about that

Regular protection like Tor, VPN, anti-fingerprinting etc

I wouldn't say you are being too paranoid

Yes the internet has turned into a horrible place
- 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.
  
  Not hundreds but thousands. I saw one app that claimed to share the data with like 815 partners
  
  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.
- 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.
OP:

posts about tracking and not consenting to give data away

also OP:

uses Google Chrome
- 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
  
  Mulch ain't the worst, but there are better options. Generally, I would recommend a Firefox-based browser instead of Chromium, because it has full extension support (including adblockers). You can check out this comparison chart, or this one.
- Bromite and Cromite are a thing too
  
  Firefox, Fennec and Mull are a thing
  
  I used cromite for a while, and in general prefer it to Mulch, but I stick to it for the webview. (only way that seems to have the webview replace Google's is to define Mulch as default browser). I still often use cromite too
  
  Edit : not just cromite in fact 😅
  
  Bromite? Not anymore. Cromite? Absolutely.
There's no such thing as legitimate interest. Reject what you can, block everything else with adblockers.
Just autowipe cookies on pageloads. Use fast rotating vpn, tunnel through tor twice, run computer in ram only, remove all storage devices.
- Amateur advice. Don't own your own device. ask your friends to look up things for you on their devices, then print them out and mail them to your PO Box. Untraceable.
  
  But how did you pay for the PO box? Using cash, think of the fingerprints. And don't forget about the post office spies
- Ez
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.
fair enough, i have a legitimate interest in always blocking trackers and advertisements in every device i own too
Your browser can block cookies.
- 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.
- I just accept all cookies. But I use Firefox Focus which deletes all cookies and browsing history every time I close it!
https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic
- You can just use uBlock Origin with this list to hide the cookie notices: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/
  
  Won't help with websites that (illegally) have cookies enabled by default.
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
- I am like 90% sure they use it regardless.
Use Firefox (or a hardened fork like Mull) with uBlock Origin and you'll never see this BS again
Have https://noyb.eu/en or https://www.eff.org/ or others never covered this ? If not it would be good to get them interested ?
- Yes https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/04/noyb-second-cookie-complaints/
  
  And the "we play nice" respons of IAB: https://iabeurope.eu/iab-europe-tcf-and-noybs-war-on-cookie-banners/
It’s their interest, not yours.
I thought legitimate interest meant you were legitimately interested in giving up your data to those vendors????
- Nope.
  
  And now hand me over your wallet. You can't deny it, I have legitimate interest.
If it won't let me untick all but the essential cookies easily - close tab, move on.

Recently I realised that some "reject all" options still don't reject the "legitimate" bullshit, so I now avoid those sites too (and no, I don't trust that extensions that claim to reject all for me will actually reject all).

I've got better things to do with my time than scrutinise these cookie pop ups and/or go through lengthy lists individually unticking options. Fuck that noise - don't have minimal respect for users? Then I'm definitely not providing you any of my data (the sites that make it the hardest rarely hold information you can't easily find elsewhere)..
When the government takes your data they will call it legitimate
- They will call it legal and we will like it.
what are your strategies against such sites tracking you?

Close and never go there again. If I'm bit enough times, it goes in the hosts file for blocking. If I really need the stuff on there, I try archived versions on web.archive.org or archive.today
This is the exception to prove the rule that the other interests are definitely illegitimate. This is the website telling you that they give away your data for illegitimate purposes.

It's not a surprise. We knew this was true. But seeing it's spelled out like this is a little galling.

Illegitimate: not authorized by the law; not in accordance with accepted standards or rules

The website is basically admitting that they're using your data maliciously, intentionally, by having this distinction.
- While you’re right conceptually, this isn’t what the wording means in terms of consent dialogs. Legitimate interest means they can assume, legitimately, that you have an interest in aspects of the site (by you being there) that require X cookies, basically. Ie their product is providing functionality they can assume you’re interested in just by being there, and they’re “pre approving” the tracking/storage for that functionality.
  
  I concur that it’s rubbish and used almost always in a manner that reeks of illegitimacy.
  
  That's not quite what it means. Legitimate interest is a term from the GDPR, and is one of the legal bases on which a company may process your personal data. Essentially the company has a "legitimate interest" (i.e. reasonable purpose) for which your data must be processed.
  
  Typical examples of legitimate interest are: fraud prevention, direct marketing, or ensuring network/information security of their IT infrastructure.
  
  The rest of your comment is essentially correct though. Notably, the examples above are not exhaustive: legitimate interest is fairly vaguely defined. And there is a process in the GDPR to object to your legitimate interest claim. This has resulted in essentially all data collection companies claiming a generic legitimate interest on your data, and it's up to you to object to all of them individually. This undermines the general "you must opt in to tracking" principles of the GDPR, but until privacy agencies of the EU get around to some enforcement that's how it is.
Do not question, just obey.
I use temporary container tabs in Firefox. (Desktop, dunno if that works on mobile)

Every new tab I open opens in its own temporary container unless I've chosen otherwise (like for sites I want to remember logins )

So, even if I accept all the cookies, they all disappear with the temporary container after browsing, and don't connect to any other container - only tabs started (e.g. by clicking links) in the same container.
- I have been using Firefox focus (klar) which remembers and records nothing. Feels like a fresh install each time. But for regularly visited sites, it requires doing the consent form each time. I hope it gets extension support one day
Use a script obfuscator. I've been using one for about a decade now and it's extremely easy to tell when companies are doing illegal spying. Looking at YOU ebay. My full name is not GKDSLGFJDS ZKGWKDSF, you fucking assholes. Enjoy the cement shoes when the advertisers you sold "my information" to find out that it's nothing but strings of randomly long random characters, kinda like what happened to twitter when they started lying and saying everyone who used their platform was SUPER into crypto (Yes, this was pre-Elon. All Musk did was bring the nazism of the platform to the surface. For an example of what twitter was really like you need look no further than BlueSky where you need to go out of your want to "disable nazis" because the CEO is convinced the average person wants to see hitler apologia)
They key word here is "their". Not your interest, theirs.
Legitimate interests may be those that allow the functionality of the service as such (eg. technical details), all others are blocked or fed with false data to make it clear to them, where they can introduce these "legitimate interests" with Vaseline.
Is that in an Android app? I also hate how there's no refuse all button, and it can take 15 minutes to opt out from all manually. I just use Rethink DNS to block ads and trackers and hope that that's enough.

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