CDP Institute

The data of 7.5 million customers of BoAt, which bills itself India’s top audio and wearables brand, has been exposed and has surfaced on the dark web, according to Forbes. Leaked data includes personal information including names, addresses, customer IDs and email IDs and may expose customers to phishing, fraud, and identity theft.

The US may have moved closer to a federal privacy bill with the newly fashioned American Privacy Rights Act (APRA). The bipartisan bill introduced by Washington State lawmakers, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, draws on US state privacy laws and on tenets of GDPR. It posits a private right of action for recourse against companies for non-deletion of data or not obtaining proper consent, a right for individuals to opt out of ads, and the right to prevent transfer or sale of their data.

Ethiopia is another country moving ahead with federal privacy legislation. Its House of Representatives passed the Personal Data Protection Proclamation (PDPP) to safeguard the data of individuals and legislate data collection and processing. This is being done in tandem with plans to issue digital IDs to all categories of citizens, including refugees.

Beyond buying and selling data, the data broker infrastructure also accrues data via feeds from third-party trackers, tags and pixels. A new report from privacy and security company, Lokker, looked at web privacy across more than 3,400 sites and shows broad use of these identifiers with 47% of websites using Meta Pixel, including 55% of S&P 500, 58% of retail, 42% of financial, and 33% of healthcare.

Upping the game to protect minors, Meta is developing an AI “nudity protection” tool to use on Instagram. This after the company faced legal charges of exploiting young users to encourage use of their platforms despite knowledge that it harms mental health. The “sexploitation” protection mechanism will find and blur images containing nudity that were sent to minors, and then let recipients choose whether to see the images.  Not sure this is reassuring….

The company will be prohibited from sharing or selling sensitive data, have to delete or destroy location data it had collected, and is required to create a program to maintain a list of sensitive locations to ensure not to share, sell or transfer such information in the future.

It includes an anonymous VPN and personal information removal to protect against fraud, along with the company’s privacy browser and identity theft restoration.

Daniel’s Law is a New Jersey regulation designed to protect law enforcement officials, including judges and police officers, by keeping personal information such as home address and phone numbers private. One of the strictest US laws, it gives officials the right to sue companies that don’t comply. Now, an overheard call between leaders, including from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Consumer Data Industry Association, and the data broker Acxiom, raised alarms they might work to weaken the law.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has entered into a multilateral agreement with the Global Corporation Arrangement for Privacy Enforcement (CAPE), a group of countries including the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea to cooperate on governing cross-border data transfers.

Colorado’s “Act Concerning Protection of the Privacy of Individuals’ Biological Data”, is a law pending the governor’s signature. Once passed, it will mark the first law in the US specifically designed to protect collection, use and disclosure of biological (including genetic, biochemical, and physiological) data and neural (relating to central or peripheral nervous system) data. This is seen as an important area of privacy law other states are expected to put increased emphasis on.

Internet Safety Labs issued its third report on student privacy and found 78% of required or recommended school apps at high risk for privacy with 79% of the apps collecting location data and that in socioeconomically challenged areas, those schools frequently had the highest rate of unsafe apps in terms of ads.