Re:EU’s War on Behavioral Advertising
by developer93 on Saturday August 26, 2023 @05:16AM
(#37271005)
As a very much devils advocate, one could argue that some companies make a revenue steam or of serving ads, so taking steps to do that is their legitimate business. I personally think that's a screwed up business model but there you are. I've always found legitimate business to be annoyingly vague.
Legitimate interest is defined by GDPR.
"I can make money by collecting this data" is not a legitimate interest.
Re:EU’s War on Behavioral Advertising
by janosdebugs on Saturday August 26, 2023 @07:36AM
(#37271838)
It does not seem that argument will fly: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2022/tiktok-italia...
You can still serve ads without tracking, collecting enormous amounts of data etc.
"Legitimate interest" is there to cover areas that are too numerous to cover in a law. E.g. combating fraud is a legitimate activity, and it requires more data than you strictly need to operate your business.
However, as with all things, companies will try and exploit any and all loopholes possible.
I’m not attacking the law. I’m attacking the implementation and the lack of Web standards to accommodate user privacy.
They had such a standard called Do Not Track. It was used by the ad industry to track users. So Do Not Track was removed.
So why would companies who don't give two shits about user privacy bother with any implementation or standards? The law already tells them to provide a yes/no option, and yet here we are.
> That’s completely and utterly idiotic.
Yes. And that's not the fault of the law, but the fault of the companies.
1. The law doesn't talk about browsers, or cookies, or banners. It's a General Data Protection Regulation. It applies in equal measure to browsers, apps, VR, AR, offline interactions, and whatever you can think of
2. The law is ridicuously simple for 99% of use cases, and is extremely cheap to implement. It says, "Only use data you need for the operation of your business. If you collect any other data, you have to ask users for consent. Consent has to be informed, and it must be as easy to say no as it is to say yes"
> Why is this not the case?
Because the companies think that tracking you and selling your data on theopen market is their god-given right.
And the standard is literally already there: it's called GDPR.