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.

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months 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

    • Joël de Bruijn@lemmy.ml
      0·
      8 months 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.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 months 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.