According to Interactive Advertising Bureau, U.S. firms spent nearly $19.2 billion on third-party audience data & data-use solutions in 2018, up 17.5% from 2017. One of many reasons why California’s new data security legislation, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), has generated a lot of buzz since its enactment in June 2018.
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Privacy remains a hotly debated subject in the U.S. and many states are taking steps to protect customer’s personal information. The newest legislation with the most teeth belongs to California, who in February 2019 passed the California Consumers Protection Act (CCPA) which goes into effect January 1, 2020.
read more A major goal of the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) is to protect consumer privacy. The rise in technology has made personal information of consumers more vulnerable than ever before. Because of this, the FTC has started to bring more data security and privacy cases against big tech companies. Since the U.S. does not have a comprehensive federal privacy law or independent agency solely committed to privacy violations, enforcement falls under the FTC’s purview. For years, many privacy advocates have claimed that the FTC does not issue strong enough penalties against big tech companies that fail to adequately safeguard consumer data. Now that more people are talking about data privacy issues and recent data breaches, we see a trend emerging of the FTC issuing larger fines and calling for stricter privacy standards. Two noteworthy FTC investigations recently made headlines due to the fines involved.
read more The General Data Protection Act has been making headlines for quite some time now, especially the potential fines that can be levied for non-compliance. Since the law’s recent enactment in May 2018, legal professionals and privacy advocates around the world have been waiting to see how countries will enforce GDPR violations. On January 21, 2019, France made one of the most significant moves to date by handing down an enormous fine to a major technology company who they deemed violated GDPR compliance protocols.
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