this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
115 points (97.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35910 readers
1110 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
ja2@lemmy.world
_MoveSwiftly@lemmy.world
Rooki@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
automodbeta@lemmy.world
115
What does "legitimate interest" mean in cookie settings? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by EarWorm@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

When going through the cookie settings for a website or an app, some of the cookies are marked as "legitimate interest". What exactly does that mean?

top 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 95 points 2 months ago (3 children)

"Legitimate interest" is a concept from GDPR, which is the EU's major legislation around digital rights. "Legitimate interest" is an extremely soft concept that basically says "a company must have some reason that is not obviously bullshit to process your data." That includes advertising. "We need to know your age, gender and city so we can decide what ads to show you" is considered "legitimate interest." See? Soft.

What it doesn't cover is "We just think it's desirable to accumulate as much data as we can about you for no particular reason and maybe we can just sell it one day, idk." That would not be considered "legitimate interest." Similarly, asking for e.g. a user's phone number but having no particular explanation for why you need it would not be "legitimate interest."

So when you see "legitimate interest" cookies as a category, you can interpret that as "cookies that have some purpose-- including advertising-- as opposed to literally no purpose other than superstitious data hoarding." Block them.

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 21 points 2 months ago

You could also just replace all that with "It's a load of bullshit that data hoarding companies managed to convince EU lawmakers was a thing in order to legally hoard data they can't otherwise legally hoard.

[–] kubica@fedia.io 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

But, when the chebox is ticked does it mean you allow that, as opposed to denying all treatment, or as opposed to collecting without limitatations?

[–] norimee@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Normally they ask what kind of cookies you "allow", so you have to remove it if you don't want them to collect your data.

Most of the time there are 3 levels you can choose:

  • accept all. Which means they can use cookies and collect data as they want.
  • allow necessary and legitimate interest cookies, which means they collect some and often it means targeted advertising.
  • only necessary cookies. That's the minimum setting that only allows what it needs to run the page and gives you random advertising.

You normally have to tick the option you want them to do and remove the tick of what you don't want to allow. But it depends on the wording if they asking you to "ALLOW" or "DENY" the options.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

If it's not clear, then it's not compliant with the GDPR.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not thaaat soft. It's not quite clear what it means, exactly. The courts still have to work that out. But you will not get away with just any argument.

It's never legal to collect more data than necessary and/or for an unspecified purpose.

Tracking for personalized ads could be based either on consent or on legitimate interest. If it's consent, then they need to tell you up front what specifically they use the data for and some other things. If it's legitimate interest, they can just start doing it, but still have to tell you afterward and also inform you that you have the right to opt out.

I guess, practically, whether a company claims one or the other is whether it feels lucky about a court case. With consent, you are on the safe side but it's a little harder to get. Legitimate interest may get you more ad money in the short run but eventually, maybe or maybe not, a fine.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don’t think I’ve ever been given an apparent choice to opt out of “legitimate interest” cookies, aside from blocking cookies at my browser

Then again I’m just trying to freeload off EU privacy protections

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

What about the sites with 50 switches that you have to toggle off one by one?

[–] Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's because they don't have to let you do that and mostly it's counterproductive to let you do that.

A prime example for a cookie with "legitimate interest" is a session cookie. Your shopping cart or even staying logged in wouldn't work without it, so it's not a good idea to even give the user the choice.

Legitimate basically means "needed for the function of what you're trying to do on that website", so ads are not it, but session cookies are. Everything in between is up for debate. (Usage tracking etc.)

[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

A prime example for a cookie with "legitimate interest" is a session cookie. Your shopping cart or even staying logged in wouldn't work without it, so it's not a good idea to even give the user the choice.

Incorrect, session cookies are textbook functional cookies

[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 56 points 2 months ago

They're legitimately interested in selling your data to paying parties.

[–] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 21 points 2 months ago

I asked a similar question a little while back: https://lemdro.id/post/10600532

It doesn’t really mean much, it’s more of a loophole from what I gathered.

[–] p_consti@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It'sintended to be used when the cookies are actually required for the app to work. For example, to preserve your login, you need a cookie, no way around. Unfortunately, as mentioned by others, it's often abused

[–] Lemonculus@fedia.io 11 points 2 months ago

No, those would go under "necessary" or "functional", not "legitimate interest".

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

That's not correct. The GDPR explicitly gives "direct marketing" as an example of a "legitimate interest".

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 6 points 2 months ago

It’s to differentiate the predatory ad-targeting/consumer-profiling cookies you’re meant to keep from the placebo ones you can turn off to feel more comfortable sharing your data with the data miners.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

The GDPR prohibits processing of personal data, unless there is a legal basis for it. Personal data covers a lot more than you think, as does processing.

What counts as a legal basis may be seen in Article 6 of the GDPR. Consent is one option, but it must be informed and freely given; a very high bar. If you have a legitimate interest, you may process data without prior consent. However, you must still provide the "data subject" with information and give them the option to opt out. They must tell you the legal basis, which they have done, but also what exactly that their interest is. (And a couple more things.) There should be a statement somewhere containing that information.

The GDPR gives "direct marketing" as an example of a legitimate interest. Some DPOs interpret the term extremely narrowly, though. It's a contentious issue. The courts will work it out over the next few years.