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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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I mean...if they pay for the service of external analization of data in exchange of money, how is that a sale of goods/data?
Ask the lawmakers who wrote the laws with vague language, because according to them, that kind of activity could be considered a sale.
As a more specific example that is more one-sided, but still not technically a "sale," Mozilla has sponsored links on the New Tab page. (they can be disabled of course)
These links are provided by a third-party, relatively privacy protecting ad marketplace. Your browser downloads a list of links from them if you have sponsored links turned on, and no data is actually sent to their service about you. If you click a sponsored link, a request is sent using a protocol that anonymizes your identity, that tells them the link was clicked. That's it, no other data about your identity, browser, etc.
This generates revenue for Mozilla that isn't reliant on Google's subsidies, that doesn't actually sell user data. Under these laws, that would be classified as a sale of user data, since Mozilla technically transferred data from your device (that you clicked the sponsored link) for a benefit. (financial compensation)
However, I doubt anyone would call that feature "selling user data." But, because the law could do so, they have to clarify that in their terms, otherwise someone could sue them saying "you sold my data" when all they did was send a small packet to a server saying that some user, somewhere clicked the sponsored link.
I would definitely call that selling my data. The recipient can now add that to my profile as an interest.
The recipient doesn't get any identifying data about you, because the data that shows the link was clicked does not identify you as an individual, since it's passed through privacy-preserving protocols.
To further clarify the exact data available to any party:
There isn't much of a technical difference between this, and someone seeing an ad in-person where they type in a link, from a practical privacy perspective.
Their implementation is completely different from traditional profile/tracking-based methods of advertising.