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by SenAnder 1032 days ago
> a for-profit company has a fairly compelling argument that 'business intelligence and analytics' is a strong legitimate interest

If profit were sufficient justification, the regulation would be toothless.

2 comments

That's a bit of an oversimplification of my point. Profit is not a blanket justification for everything. However, when considering the legitimate interests of a company, it's important to look at the services they are offering (and what pricing they have for those service), as well as their overall business model.

WhatsApp saying 'we need this information for business intelligence purposes so we can grow our core business' is an argument that they have a legitimate interest in processing that data, and should be considered during their balancing test.

Signal, on the other hand, would struggle to rely on this argument, as their core business is to provide a service for free, funded by donations.

Have there been any court cases proving it wasn't sufficient justification?
https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/cjeu-define-scope...

Looks like that very question is with the EU courts at the moment.

But confusingly, yes, there are other court cases you can find online that have said that profit alone is not a legitimate interest.