CDP Institute

The Competition Commission of India issued a $162.9 million fine and issued a cease and desist order to stop Google’s anti-competitive practices of favoring its own suite of Android apps over competitors’. The ruling comes at the same time lawmakers in Asia, Europe and the US are examining Google’s market dominance. Last month, the company received a massive $4 billion fine from the EU also related to Android.

Clearview AI, known for its persistent view that privacy laws don’t apply to them, has raised its impertinence to a new level ignoring France’s regulator, CNIL, altogether. CNIL, which deemed Clearview in violation of GDPR and ordered it to stop processing French citizen data, responded by imposing its maximum fine of €20 million. This follows €20 million fines each from Italy and Greece against Clearview, and a lesser amount from the UK. Problem is that regulators' limited legal resources make it difficult to enforce these. But that may change once plans for the EU bloc’s AI Act moves forward.

The Philippines’ President signed a controversial SIM Card Registration Bill into law, and the country’s National Privacy Commission (NPC) promptly issued a press statement acknowledging implementation will require mass collection of personal data. The NPC statement also added recommendations will be made on personal data risks can be minimized, but privacy advocate concerns are that by requiring national registration by all SIM card holders, the authorities will hold significantly more personal information, and data could be used for surveillance of those who oppose the government.

Data privacy company Compliant has published, “2022 Data Privacy: The Compliance Illusion,” a white paper resulting from an audit of 500+ EU and US advertiser- and publisher-owned websites in which they found the majority unwittingly acquire data without appropriate consent. This is true even when companies employ a Consent Management Platform (CMP). For example, of 92% of EU publishers surveyed that operate a CMP, 81% were found to pass user data on to third parties before consent was obtained.

Texas schools have begun distributing DNA Kits to families of public-school students with the stated intent of being able to use information to identify children following emergencies by matching to their parents’ DNA. This does not inspire confidence in the state’s determination to stop the shootings, such as the one that occurred in May at the Ulvalde elementary school, but rather indicates its willingness to gather personal data. The 2021 State Senate Bill 2158, which legalizes the collection of DNA via kids’ saliva, fingerprints and physical appearance information, doesn’t solve... Read More >

A survey of Gen Z respondents and Gen Z parents conducted by security companies 1Password and Malwarebytes found 84% of Gen Z individuals said they would raise kids differently than their parents with regards to internet use and privacy protection. Privacy concerns reported included that 79% of parents had posted images, videos or personal information about the kids online, and 73% of Gen Zers wished their parents would have asked permission before doing so.

The US District Court judge sided with the tech companies ruling the Illinois’ biometric statute, BIPA does not apply outside the state because it does not expressly state it should do so. This may make it difficult in the future for Illinois residents to use BIPA to sue companies outside their state for perceived violations.

The start-up uses a mix of techniques in its system to protect customer identity by unlinking their data from direct and indirect identifiers.

We humans will pay a lot for a good time and a cutting-edge experience, as Meta well knows. So, the company that brought the world’s faces to Facebook, wants to out-pixel itself by getting more precise coordinates of every smile, fret and frown you can emote. This with their new $1,500 Meta Quest Pro headset that has its cameras facing you. All to “personalize your [virtual] experience” – a.k.a. track your every emotion and eye movement, and presumably, predict what you’ll buy better than ever before.

A landmark case, believed to be the first jury verdict in an Illinois privacy biometrics case, has entered a $228 million judgement against BNSF Railway favoring the 45,000-member class-action. While BNSF plans to appeal, if the decision holds, each class action member could get approximately $5,000.

Turkey’s parliament just passed amendments that raise significant human rights concerns for changes to laws governing censorship, journalism, and social media. This includes empowering its government with the ability to compel social media companies to comply with requests to take down online content and hand over user data. And, companies unwilling to comply, can face “internet throttling,” which means their company bandwidth would be clipped.

Cisco’s 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey of 2600 adults in 12 countries, found 84% of consumers equate how a company handles their data with how much they are valued by that company – a number that increased ten percentage points since 2019. Close to half of all surveyed, 43%, don’t feel able to protect their data due to lack of corporate transparency.