Privacy Insider Newsletter | Data Privacy News Delivered Weekly

Privacy newsletter - July 7, 2020

Written by Arlo Gilbert | Jul 7, 2020 3:58:19 PM

Welcome to the latest edition of the Privacy Insider Newsletter. Each week, we send you the latest and smartest news in the world of data privacy.

Here are the top stories from last week you might have missed:

  1. California began enforcing the California Consumer Privacy Act on July 1st. The state Attorney General was undeterred by repeated requests from businesses to delay enforcement. Now that it is in force, the biggest upcoming development is the vote of the California Privacy Rights Act (“CCPA 2.0”) in November. Link
  2. While many people are focused on California’s privacy act going into force, South Africa also began enforcing their data protection act on July 1st. The enforcement date follows a 7-year wait - they signed the law in 2013, and started drafting it in 2003. While the South Africans took their time, they still enacted privacy legislation before many countries. Link
  3. A data center company falsely claimed they were part of the EU-US Privacy Shield program. With more and more buying decisions being made with privacy in mind, it is safe to expect specious claims about privacy credentials to become more common. Link
  4. The European Commission published a report arguing that GDPR has been a success in the first 2 years of enactment. While the law is imperfect and enforcement has been uneven, GDPR has broadly been successful at prodding companies to improve their privacy practices. Public and regulatory support for GDPR suggests that we’ll see more privacy legislation in the future. Link
  5. Not everyone is pleased with GDPR. The Trump administration has been ramping up criticism of Europe's privacy law. The U.S. government claims that the law has complicated tracking down cybercriminals, particularly tracking domain ownership using the WHOIS database. Link
  6. TikTok and a number of other apps have been in the news this week for having access to the clipboard data of iOS users. We’re all in favor of being concerned about privacy infringements, but public backlash against these apps is overblown. There isn’t any evidence that clipboard data has been sent off device, and the true issues stem from security tradeoffs made by Apple. Press coverage - Counterargument
  7. Safari is coming out with a host of new privacy features, but most of these can be added to Chrome and Firefox today. Wired released a simple overview of how to improve your browser’s privacy, regardless of whether you use Safari, Chrome or Firefox. Link