legitimate interest

Big Data Sucks

In case you didn't already know, I've been on this 12+ month journey to reduce my spam/junk email and believe it or not some days I have ZERO spam/junk emails. Yeah I know, unbelievable right? It's been hard work and I’ve learnt a massive amount. When you focus on something with great attention more and more information gathers from the ether and finds it way to you.

Incredibly this week I received a ‘notice of data processing’ email from a company I had never heard of, but it has given me an insight into the rabbit hole of big data and the companies that are gathering huge amount of company information with the singular goal of selling it on to interested spammers. They all claim that they gather this information on the basis of 'legitimate interest', the biggest loophole that has been invented by countries' information commissioners. There's never any 'legitimate interest' in my view to send unsolicited emails these days.

I predict one day this loophole will be closed off, but it will need a lot of lobbying by citizens towards government institutions to do so.

Let's examine my rabbit hole. I have highlighted the company names that I have investigated and communicated with and what I discovered in the process.