Washington's Attorney General Counted, and 83% of People Said They Have No Control
Washington released its first-ever Data Privacy Report on 14 August. In 2025 the state logged 209 breaches affecting more than 8 million residents — a...
dataBrokers
18 articles on dataBrokers.
ICE Pulled a $125 Million Sole-Source Contract and Nobody Should Feel Relieved
ICE withdrew its no-bid $125 million surveillance-data award to Thomson Reuters and will compete it instead, with a solicitation expected 24 August. I...
Somebody Finally Mapped the Pipe: DecryptAds Puts 284 Million Ad Supply-Chain Records in the Open
For years the answer to 'who exactly received my location when that app loaded an ad?' has been that nobody outside the industry could know. DecryptAd...
Fortnight in Review: A Delete Button That Works, an Age Gate That Won't, and Seams Coming Apart
Two weeks that produced the best privacy mechanism America has ever shipped and the worst architecture Congress has advanced, in the same news cycle. ...
Four Ad Libraries Ship Your Precise Location by Default — and the App Developer Usually Doesn't Know
An EFF investigation found that BidMachine, InMobi, Verve's HyBid, and Huawei's Petal Ads can collect or transmit device location by default once the ...
California's Delete Button Went Live Today — 600 Data Brokers, 300,000 Requests, $200 a Day
As of August 1, every data broker registered in California must check the state's DROP platform at least once every 45 days and delete the personal in...
Courts Are Deciding Nobody Is Liable for the Trackers on Your Health Insurer's Website
A federal judge dismissed claims against Blue Shield of California over Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel running on its site, reasoning that only t...
ICE Outsourced Finding People — 13 Private Firms, 50,000 Names a Month, and AI Doing the Looking
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued open-ended skip-tracing contracts to 13 private companies worth up to $1.2 billion over two years. Each...
The Grace Period Is Over: Nine States Can Now Fine You for a First Privacy Violation
Twenty state privacy laws are in effect, and as of July 2026 nine of their cure periods have lapsed — a first violation now means enforcement, not a w...
Loyalty Tax: The Washington Post Allegedly Charged Its Most Devoted Readers More — by Watching How They Read
A class action says The Washington Post turned readers' habits — which columnists they follow, when they check election news — into a 'pricing profile...
Connecticut Just Quietly Passed One of the Strongest State Privacy Updates of 2026
Connecticut's Governor signed SB 4 and SB 5 into law, significantly amending the state's consumer data privacy act and creating a new data broker law....
The 'Your Phone Is Listening' Ad Tool Was a Scam — and the FTC Just Proved It
Cox Media Group marketed 'Active Listening' — an AI service it claimed could target ads based on conversations overheard by smart devices. The FTC fou...
California Just Fined GM $12.75M for Collecting Too Much Data — Not for Leaking It
California's $12.75 million settlement with General Motors is the largest CCPA penalty in state history — and the first built on the data-minimization...
The FTC Just Banned a Data Broker From Selling Sensitive Location Data. Here's Why That Matters.
The FTC secured a settlement banning Kochava's subsidiary from selling sensitive location data linked to millions of mobile devices — including data r...
GM Sold Your Location to Data Brokers While Claiming It Didn't. California Just Fined Them $12.75 Million.
General Motors earned $20 million selling OnStar driver location and behaviour data to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis while its privacy policy told c...
The Warrant-Free Surveillance Loophole That AI Just Made Catastrophically Worse
The government doesn't need a warrant to buy your location data, browsing history, or financial transactions — because it buys them from commercial da...
The 2026 Digital Therapy Wrap-Up: A Year of Breaches, Subpoenas, Suicide Lawsuits, and the Bots That Replaced Your Therapist
Talkspace transcripts in court. Hims & Hers breached. Character.AI and Google paying out on teen suicide cases. OpenAI fighting seven wrongful death l...
Your Therapist Now Has a Subpoena: How Talkspace Turned 8 Billion Words of Mental Health Confessions Into Court Evidence and AI Training Data
Every word Jennifer Kamrass typed to her Talkspace therapist ended up in court — produced by the employer she was suing. Talkspace says it has 'one of...