CDP Institute

It’s been a year since Mozilla and DuckDuckGo announced plans for global opt-out capability to let users say “no” to sale of their data without having to go site-by-site. California’s privacy law now requires that companies that collect its residents data must comply with opt-out requests that are sent through Global Privacy Control, so once Firefox is ready to launch the tool, it can have significant impact.

Facebook (Meta), Snap, Twitter, and YouTube were big losers following Apple’s overhaul of its privacy policies to give users more control. The estimated $9.85 billion lost by the companies in the third and fourth quarter on average represented a 12% loss of revenue for 2021, according to research firm Lotame.

Draft legislation for a Bangladesh data protection law has raised concern that citizen privacy rights may be suppressed, rather than protected, if the Data Protection Act (DPA) is ultimately passed. The draft, which had been available online earlier this year, indicted legislators were considering increased government access to personal data and expansion of departmental surveillance capabilities. This coupled with exempting key agencies from prosecution, could result in weaponization of the law to stifle critics of the government.

A survey of 2600 IT and security professionals conducted by Thales found security breaches increasingly common in multicloud and hybrid cloud environments. Breach levels, which were as high as 44% in US & 43% in EU, are expected to rise in the coming year, though encryption levels were low across all industries averaging only 17%.

Sixty percent of privacy professionals surveyed by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) expect budget increases in the coming year, and 45% plan new hires in the next six months. Participants also ranked their biggest challenges and complying with cross-border transfers topped the list at 59%.

Brands are under increased pressure across age brackets to ensure privacy, and a new IDC survey identified a “Privacy First” user segment which is young, tech-savvy, concerned about online privacy – and willing to pay for it. While most users surveyed felt companies should protect consumer privacy, the younger “Privacy First” group IDC identified, were willing to pay for tools, such as VPNs, ad blockers and privacy password keepers, to ensure their protection.

How is children’s privacy being protected around the world? This paper from the CDPI explains the latest laws, recommends future steps and provides larger context for this crucial topic which has been so much in the news. This article was first published in the Journal of Data Protection & Privacy, Volume 4 Number 4, published by Henry Stewart Publications, London.

Parents, guardians and youth under 18 will be allowed to request removal of self-images that appear in Google Search queries – with the caveat that it won’t mean the image will be off the Internet. Also, for Google to consider removal, the request must meet certain requirements. Not ideal, certainly, and it remains to be seen how useful this will be.