This shouldn’t be normalised

governorkeagan@lemdro.id to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 796 points –

Outlook got updated on my iPhone last night and now they want me to agree to having my data shared with 807 partners.

Important note: I don’t use outlook as my primary email provider. I use Proton with a custom domain but I keep outlook for some old emails.

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Ridiculous. How can someone write "we value your privacy" and then share data with 807 partners. If I share anything with 8 people I pretty much consider it public information already, unless I have a very good reason to trust them. Sharing something with 807 companies is probably less private than taking all that data, putting it up on a billboard, and placing that billboard next to the busiest place in town.

And what exactly qualifies as "legitimate interest"?

I'm legitimately interested in getting the bank account & sort code details of Elon, Bezos, Arnault, Zuckerberg, Gates, Ballmer, Buffet, Ellison, Page, and Brin.

That ist something I ask myself, too. It's so irritating, having to decline all these greasy fingered little fuckers one-by-one. That is just a way for me, nowadays, to delete the app completely.

Just curious what you're up to, bud

Something utterly deranged, which is why I care about my privacy. I swear to god if Mozilla starts indexing my mail to train their crappy AI project, I will lose it.

"Legitimate interest" refers to that which lawmakers have considered to be the "legitimate interest" of private companies, that is, making money selling your data. "Illegitimate interest" would probably be using your private information to blackmail you.

I understand the legal meaning. It's all hogwash regardless. Nearly everything can be explained away as legitimate interests by claiming "marketing research" and "advertising".

I think this is so they can have it auto toggled on per some EU regulations, forcing you to go through and untoggle every single one with "legitimate interest".

It's what I assume, anyway

I was also curious about this and just had a chat with gpt 3.5 about it, and it gave an example of "a bank collecting data to detect and prevent fraud" as a valid legitimate interest and "a company collecting data to sell to advertisers" as an invalid legitimate interest.

It also said that legitimate interests must be explained, as on what interests they are, why they are considered legitimate, how the processing of that data accomplishes that interest and any potential impact it has on the user's privacy and freedom.

Based on this, I think "legitimate interest" is being used as a reason instead of a category that covers genetic legitimate reasons that should still be explained, not hand waved as "legitimate interest".

Though I believe this only applies in the context of the GPDR (because the bot specifically mentioned it), and might vary in other jurisdictions.

807 is too big for a typical auditorium.

Imagine an auditorium filled to capacity with people standing at the back and crouching in the rows. At the front of the auditorium a Microsoft spokesman is saying "Ok partners, here's the confidential data. Make sure nobody shares it beyond this room. Ok, so David wrote a letter to his mother Nancy on March 2nd, which included the keywords 'prostate', 'cancer' and 'diagnosis'. If you'd like to use those words to show David some ads, go right ahead -- but make sure nobody beyond this room knows this confidential information. Next up is Martha..."

There is a monetary value in what you want to keep private, so of course they value your privacy.