CDP Institute

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Meta €91 million (US$102 million) for failure to protect users’ passwords that were exposed in a January 2019 breach – and for its two-month delay in notifying the Commission. The breach impacted 36 million Facebook and Instagram users in the European Economic Area.

Telegram has changed its privacy policy and will now provide judicial authorities with user ID data upon request. The company, which touts strict privacy control, had previously limited cooperation with law enforcement to cases involving suspected terrorists.

California passed an amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to add neural data protection under the category of sensitive data. Users can now request, delete, correct, and ask to limit what brain activity data a company collects on them.

In a major kid privacy change, Instagram announced all teen accounts in the US, UK, Canada and Australia are getting new protective settings that limit the types of content young people ages 18 and younger can see and restrict who can contact them. Teens under 16 will be required to get parental permission to change the default settings. This privacy plan will roll out to more countries beginning early 2025.

The third annual report from the cybersecurity research team at Comparitech found less Google Play App compliance with the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) than in previous years. More than two in five apps of the 500 surveyed may violate COPPA as compared with 1 in 5 apps in 2022, and 1 in 4 apps in 2023.

The law had been instituted during the pandemic to help restaurants recover from the business downturn. It was challenged by delivery companies on the grounds of the First Amendment for violating customer privacy.

Mozilla disagrees because PPA is designed to potentially generate a report based on ads in Firefox, so it doesn’t share browsing activity directly with third-parties. Noyb contends it should have an opt-in system instead.