[Nextgrid]

> Ads do not.

There are plenty of scams and malware being spread through ads. Furthermore ads are a parasite that wastes most people's time for no benefit with no official way for them to opt-out (a lot of services don't allow you to pay money to opt-out); it'a a cancer on society.

> Especially in this case where PII data is not being provided to the advertising company.

You are literally talking about capturing e-mail addresses so you can pass them to an advertising partner to target ads to these users. How is that not PII?

[icedchai]

The emails can be hashed, turning it into a pseudo-anonymous ID. It is debatable whether that is PII. It probably comes down to whoever can afford the better legal representation.

[dependenttypes]

Hashes are not a panacea. I see them being suggested as solution for anonymization of ip addresses/domain names/urls/file names/emails all the time but these people that make said suggestions are either clueless or are arguing in bad faith. It is extremely easy to brute-force the majority of said hashes. (in addition to that I doubt that anyone is passing hashed emails as it would make it slightly inconvenient to send emails to said accounts)

[Nextgrid]

It's indeed extremely easy to brute force these hashes when you have a database of the original (plaintext) data stolen from people's contacts which reduces your search space dramatically.

[dependenttypes]

It is extremely easy even if you don't.