Legitimate interest is a legal basis for processing the personal data of individuals under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It can be either the interest of the businesses or the interests of the third parties associated with the businesses, such as commercial interests, marketing purposes, providing data security, etc.
Legitimate interests provide businesses with a legitimate reason for collecting and processing the personal data of their customers when other legal bases, such as consent, are not available.
However, legitimate interest doesn’t grant businesses the right to collect any data they want. Businesses should be transparent about what data they collect, why they collect it, how it is used, who has access to it, and how long it will be retained.
Additionally, the processing of personal data under legitimate interest must not violate the privacy rights of the users. They also have the right to restrict the processing of their personal data collected under legitimate interests.