Saw this today and now I’m reconsidering if Boost is right for me. I’m really hoping this is shitty boiler plate that was accidentally copied and over looked because that is some bullshit to say “unless we decide we want to use your personal data for whatever we want”.
I know “legitimate interest” is a phrase from the cookies law but there is no legitimate interest justification for this. My data is my data and I decide who has a legitimate interest in it so advertisers can fuck off, as can Boost if this the direction it’s going.
Edit to say this blew up. I didn’t realise I was kicking as big a hornet’s nest and haven’t read all the comments yet.
To be clear, what I don’t like about this and other provisions in the terms is the language and implications around data use. I’ve no problem with ads being shown - I want developers to get paid for the work they do and that makes it possible for users to have “free” access to software if they can’t afford to purchase.
I also want to add the response from Boost’s dev below to make sure it’s visible. You’ll see that it is boilerplate but required by Google and was present in Boost for reddit. I just hadn’t seen it because I purchased it immediately based on a recommendation. It doesn’t make me happy about it but does remove some doubts I was having about the direction Boost is heading.
I will be purchasing the app to support the dev because I do like Boost but I understand not everyone can afford everything so you’ll see some other suggestions in the comments below that don’t have any ads if you’re not happy with the free version and ads with their associated loss of data privacy.
Dev here.
The dialog and its content is not created by me, it is a standard solution from Google to comply with GDPR and other laws. More info here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10114014?hl=en
The consent dialog is also required by Google AdMob to show ads, and it is shown when the ad network is initialized.
When the app launches, first it checks for the remove ads purchase, and if it is not present, it will initialize the ads sdk. The ad network is not initialized if the remove ads purchase is detected.
Boost for Reddit was using the very same ad networks and consent dialog.
It’s much broader than that and generally an organisation can do a balance of interest assessment and decide that a processing activity falls under legitimate interests… kind of like giving the monkey the key to the banana storage…
Exactly, I remember that while studying GDPR an example for legitimate interest was a company that self-advertises to you: I get your email from the purchase you just made because I have legitimate interest in continuing my business and I want to be able to advertise myself to you again to survive in the market. But trust me, I’ll just use it for the legitimate interest!
Yeah some of those are very atrocious and would absolutely not sustain an objective review. At any rate anything that gets money to a company in the broadest sense is vital to it soooo….
They need to crack down on what businesses are claiming is a legitimate interest. If the user could disable it and have their product/experience largely unchanged, it really isn’t a legitimate interest.
But that’s the whole thing; there needs to be a balance between users - who are largely customers or the product or an hybrid of both- and commercial interests otherwise there won’t be a lot of product / experience to be enjoyed. My personal take on the topic is that transparency is where it’s at. Knowing exactly wtf a company is doing with my data worries me much more - I can choose to be part of the game knowingly or skip if I don’t want some processing to happen. That they claim legitimate interest or not I couldn’t care less.
Since the regulation is so broad, it’s super risky to do that though. Especially for smaller companies who can’t adequately defend themselves if some data protection agency comes for them.
Yeah but at the same time smaller companies generally don’t see privacy authorities barging in like in larger ones ;-) Also by following the gdpr tracker one can see what’s generally acceptable and align rather easily.