Unless you live under a rock, you have heard talk about data privacy and your rights as a consumer. This past year, in the US alone, companies ranging from cosmetics to pet care have been subject to data-privacy-related lawsuits. The biggest of which was Sephora, which had to pay fines of 1.2 million dollars for selling consumers' data without their consent.
As a consumer, you increasingly have more rights regarding how your data is bought and sold in the data market. In 2023 you will see a significant expansion of those rights as five states' laws: California Privacy Rights Act ( CPRA), The Colorado Privacy Act ( CPA), The Connecticut Data Privacy Act ( CTPDA), The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act ( VDPA), and The Utah Consumer Privacy Act ( UCPA), are set to take effect, and there is a clear commonality:
Consumers are entitled to more transparency and control over how their personal data is handled.
Here are some highlights of new rights afforded to you:
- Right to correction means you can request to have your Personal and Sensitive Personal Information ('PI' and 'SPI') corrected if you find them inaccurate.
- Right to opt-out of automated decision making, you can say no to your PI and SPI being used to make automated inferences, e.g. in profiling for targeted, behavioral advertisement online.
- Right to know about automated decision making, you can request access to and know how automated decision technologies work and their probable outcomes.
- Right to limit the use of Sensitive Personal Information, you can make businesses restrict their use of this category of personal data, particularly around third-party sharing, by choosing to opt out. In , and , companies must receive to collect or process your Sensitive Personal Information.