India is the latest country on the list to adopt federal data privacy laws for their citizens. According to The Times of India, the two-decade-old Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act), the existing governing law, hasn’t been able to keep up with the rapid advancements in technology. With India recently witnessing a massive increase in cyberattacks, cybercriminals have been steadily discovering new ways to obtain sensitive personal information.
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Amazon Mishandling Customer Data
ticle recently surfaced about Amazon mishandling customer data back in 2018. The article states that, “according to internal documents from the Center for Investigative Reporting and WIRED, Amazon’s vast empire of customer data—its metastasizing record of what you search for, what you buy, what shows you watch, what pills you take, what you say to Alexa, and who’s at your front door—had become so sprawling, fragmented, and promiscuously handled within the company that the security division couldn’t even map all of it, much less adequately defend its borders.”
Continue readingApple’s App Tracking Transparency
Apple released the App Tracking Transparency feature back in April with the iOS14.5 update, but many people still haven’t heard about it. There are so many new privacy protections being put in place privately and federally that are threatening the flow of user data which companies rely on to target consumers with online ads. How does this App Tracking Transparency feature work and why should you care?
Continue readingWhat are Pixel Tags?
There seems to be so many unknowns today as we browse the internet. A large majority of consumers open their device, navigate to a site, complete a transaction and resume their day as usual without giving any thought to the processes behind their browsing session. Then individuals open Facebook a few hours later to see an advertisement for the winter boots they just purchased in their Google Chrome web browser. How is that possible? Let’s talk about it.
Continue readingHow Zillow Uses Your Data
Have you heard about the recent Zillow situation? iBuyers have been purchasing homes from consumers who are looking to sell quickly and conveniently, using algorithms and user data to determine what price to pay. After minor renovations, they place the house back on the market for an elevated price. Zillow recently announced that they will no longer be taking place in this arena after failing to keep up with the dynamically changing housing market. So, what does this have to do with your data?
Continue readingNew Australian Privacy Law
Australia is the next country in line to introduce federal privacy legislation. Attorney-General Michaelia Cash released an exposure draft of the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enhancing Online Privacy and Other Measures) Bill 2021, which would enable the creation of a binding Online Privacy code for social media services, data brokers and other large online platforms operating in Australia.
Continue readingNew Genetic Privacy Laws
The National Law Review recently reported that Florida and California are enacting laws protecting people’s genetic information. Both states are taking different approaches to this new type of privacy protection, but their intent is similar. The National Law Review outlines the specifics of these laws in the table below.
Continue readingWhitepages: Deleting Your Information
addresses, 2 phone numbers, spouses name, parents names and in-laws names to populate on the Whitepages profile for me. I immediately felt violated and wanted to revoke Whitepage’s consent to my information.
Continue readingThe Twitch Data Breach
Last week the Amazon-owned streaming platform, Twitch, was the victim of a massive data breach. During this breach, an anonymous user posted a 128GB file to a message board which undoubtedly contained sensitive information.
Continue readingChina’s New Data Privacy Law
On August 20th, China passed the first national data privacy statute called Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (PIPL). This new bill is largely modeled after the European Union’s GDPR. This poses a lot of new obstacles for tech companies here in the United States as PIPL focuses on data collection and transfer both inside and outside of China.
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