Consent Withdrawal in a Freemium App
A mobile fitness app has 1.2 million users. On signup, users see a single checkbox: 'I agree to the Terms, Privacy Policy, and to receive personalised offers from partners.' The checkbox is pre-ticked for users who sign up via a partner referral link. Personalised offers involve sharing hashed email addresses with 14 advertising partners. A user emails support asking to 'stop the ads but keep my account'. Support replies that ads are part of the free tier and the user must delete their account to opt out. The user then submits a formal complaint. The app also relies on 'legitimate interests' for the partner sharing in its privacy notice, while the signup flow describes it as consent.
1. Assess the validity of the consent obtained at signup and the lawfulness of the partner sharing.
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The consent is invalid on multiple grounds:
- Not freely given: Bundling terms, privacy policy, and marketing consent into one checkbox, and conditioning free-tier access on ad sharing, creates imbalance. Consent must be freely given; tying it to service access undermines validity.
- Not specific: A single checkbox covering terms, privacy, and partner marketing is not granular. Consent for 14 partners sharing hashed emails requires specific information about categories of recipients and purposes.
- Pre-ticked: Pre-ticked boxes do not constitute active consent. Consent requires a clear affirmative act.
- Insufficient information: The signup flow does not identify partner categories or explain the profiling.
Lawful basis conflict: The privacy notice claims legitimate interests while the signup flow claims consent. This inconsistency is itself a transparency failure. If consent is the chosen basis, it must be valid; if legitimate interests, a balancing test and opt-out must be in place, and the signup wording is misleading. The partner sharing is therefore likely unlawful and should be suspended pending remediation: unbundle consent, remove pre-ticking, provide granular partner-category choices, and align the notice with the actual basis.
2. The user wants to 'stop the ads but keep my account'. Describe how the request should be handled and what the support agent's response should have been.
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The request is a withdrawal of consent for marketing and should be honoured without requiring account deletion.
- Withdrawal must be as easy as giving consent. The app should provide a self-service toggle to disable personalised ads and partner sharing. Support should action it immediately if self-service is unavailable.
- Consequences must be explained: The user can keep the account; they may receive non-personalised ads or a paid ad-free option. Withdrawal cannot be penalised by removing core service features that do not depend on the marketing processing.
- Downstream action: The app must notify the 14 partners to stop processing and delete hashed identifiers where feasible, and record the withdrawal.
- Response template: Acknowledge the request, confirm marketing consent withdrawn, confirm account remains active, explain effect on ads, and confirm partner notification.
The support agent's response was wrong because it treated marketing consent as inseparable from the service and effectively penalised withdrawal, which is a breach of consent requirements.