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Massachusetts bans sale of precise location data in new privacy rights bill

Massachusetts bans sale of precise location data in new privacy rights bill

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Comments (29)

  • jboggan
    California very quietly passed AB-1542 last week which includes precise location data, health data, SSNs, etc. I expect many states to follow suit.Related, General Motors got hit with a $12.75M fine for reselling OnStar location data last month: https://ccpa.world/enforcement/gm-onstar-smart-driver
  • danesparza
    Feels like the word 'sale' may actually turn into a loophole. It should have probably been worded to use 'exchange' or 'transfer' instead. But this is progress.
  • post_break
    Does this include vehicle data? That's a big one. Your new car selling you out constantly.
  • Cider9986
    this is the bill we need to pass in the house instead of them trying to age-(identity)gate social media.(https://epic.org/press-release-massachusetts-senate-unanimou...)
  • like_any_other
    A good first step, but the harm is already done when the data is gathered. Stalking should be illegal even if you don't sell the information you gathered, I don't want Toyota or GM or Google knowing where I've been either, not just their "partners", and it's long past the time the EULA loophole was closed. Contracts exist to serve society, not the other way around.
  • john_strinlai
    still waiting for any of the many existing privacy bills, worldwide, to start doing meaningful enforcement.
  • ldoughty
    Will this have reach and teeth though?I can imagine loopholes to this... nothing stops facebook/google from buying this data from companies not in Massachusetts? and facebook/google don't have to give advertisers the location information but can still use that information when determining the advertisement to return, right? In theory the big silicon valley "targets" of this bill don't actually have a huge incentive to give this data away, do they? They just need to be able to read/access it, which I don't think this law stops? Assuming the data broker is not doing business in Massachusetts itself
  • mc32
    This is good and all States should adopt some. Eventually I’d like to see one at the federal level that supersedes state level ones so that we don’t have to deal the the mess that is taxation across 50 states. A nice uniform privacy bill at the Fed level would be nice.
  • josefritzishere
    This is very exciting.