News - CDP Institute

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.

CDPI Newsletter

Flaws in Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals could allow users’ anonymity to be compromised and permit tracking, says the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Among its responsibilities, the ICO is charged with protecting data privacy. The concerns have been shared with the Competition and Markets Authority which is already scrutinizing Google’s proposals from an antitrust perspective.

CDPI Newsletter

International supermarket chain Aldi says it is the first retailer to deploy cashier-free checkout in an existing, full-size store in the U.S. It is implementing Grabango (get it?) checkout-free technology in Aurora, Ill. This comes after Amazon dropped its Just Walk Out technology from large grocery stores, although it will continue to use it in smaller locations.

CDPI Newsletter

Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.

CDPI Newsletter

Behavioral data analytics platform Fullstory has introduced a new solution, Data Direct, to capture behavioral signals across web and mobile and channel them into destinations within the business’s data eco-system. The flow of structured behavioral data can, for example, be integrated into data warehouses, APIs and webhooks. Data Direct will be available within Fullstory or as a standalone solution.

CDPI Newsletter

The Japan FTC has found that Google placed unfair restrictions on Yahoo Japan when it altered a 2020 deal to allow Yahoo to use Google’s search engine advertising technology that linked ads to search keywords. Google has submitted a plan to resolve the dispute that the FTC has called “workable.” The FTC has said that Google’s unfair practices started ten years ago and continued for some seven years.

CDPI Newsletter

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), in response to a request by the Dutch, Norwegian & Hamburg Data Protection Authorities (DPA), issued an opinion against the so called “Pay or Ads” model that Meta and other big online platforms have used. The regulator concern is that by offering consumers only a binary choice, consumers are forced to opt in to services at a level of consent they don’t want and should be offered a free option of providing companies less or no personal data.

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

Gay dating app Grindr is facing a mass lawsuit from more than 650 UK users who say their highly sensitive data was shared, including HIV status and test results. The allegation is that the company made the information available to third parties for commercial use, a claim that Grindr is denying.

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

Nebraska is the sixteenth US state to pass a privacy law. It will take effect July 1, 2025 and provides consumers opt-out rights to protect against online ad targeting and grants universal rights for consumers to use opt-out tools on browsers, where companies they are dealing with honor similar signals from other states. The law is already being criticized for not requiring small businesses to comply and for having limited enforcement mechanisms.

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined TikTok £12.7 million (~US $15.9 million), a penalty the company says it was pleased to accept (in lieu of the £27 million originally planned fine). While the company did express some regret for having been found to allow children under 13 use its site without their parents’ consent, we are still left with the questions: 1) Why didn’t they feel badly for doing this?, and 2) Why make these fines so affordable to them, when the message and penalty have no impact?

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

“Ask Meta AI anything” is what you now see instead of the traditional search bar across Meta apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Meta AI will still perform the basic search function but will also answer questions and chat with you. It should hardly be a surprise when a tech company launches a genAI solution these days but this is a bold challenge to Google and Open.ai (it’s also available as a standalone tool at Meta.ai).

CDPI Newsletter