How often do you hit "Consent" on pop-ups about Cookies, and EULA's, and App Permissions without even bothering to check what you're surrendering? For most of us, it's "every single time" thanks to our impatience. We see these pop-ups as an inconvenience that we just want to dismiss as quickly as possible so we can crack on with accessing whatever content we were trying to before the pesky intrusion occurred.
I had becoming increasingly aware some time ago of how excessive some websites I use were in respect of the sheer volume of ad partners they were selling my data to. And I also began to seriously question the legitimacy of the ad partners, and the scale of due diligence being undertaken in vetting how data is processed and stored by them. Some of these third parties don't even sound like legitimate companies!
Two nights ago I went to look after Pou, the Tamagotchi-esque pet of my daughters, and spent a frustrating 10-minutes going through Consent Permissions before I could use the app. These permissions were both excessive and concerning. After knocking off toggles for all the categories, I then had to go manually into the Vendor list, and manually turn off "Legitimate Interest" for all the partners too. Finally I could feed Pou his little slice of cake, give him a little wash, and put him to bed. We've raised this pet since my kid was 5-years old, transferring it from her tired Amazon Fire Tablet, to her iPhone, and finally it's ended up on my Pixel 7. It's effectively become my responsibility to look our digital pet, and she will ask to see him from time to time. That's all fine. What isn't fine, is this:
Last night I open the app again, to be presented with the exact same pop-up and forced to go through the exact same process for 10-minutes, turning off individual vendor permissions, again. I delved a little deeper this time, to demonstrate precisely why I was reluctant to just click "Consent" and get on with my day.
Take a look at this one (remember, this is just one of the 204 vendors/ad-partners that Pou's developers want to sell my data to). The UK Trade Desk Ltd.
They want a Cookie duration of 10-years. And they allegedly have a Legitimate Interest in knowing all of the following which includes my precise location within a radius of less than 500 meters based on my GPS coordinates!
Justify it. I would love to hear why these random companies have a Legitimate Interest in this data. It's a GDPR loop-hole that clearly needs addressing.
And if Pou's developers are going to force me to manually opt-out of each of these categories of vendor permissions for 10-minutes every time I load the app, then I think it may be time to tell my daughter our that the tamagotchi's batteries have died.
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