US Companies Unprepared for Privacy Regulations

Governments around the world are issuing new regulations intended to protect individual privacy. And according to a new report, companies around the world aren't ready for those regulations.

The new report from the Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance (OTA) contains analysis of 29 variables in 1,200 privacy statements against common themes in three major privacy regulations: the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

While the majority of the companies audited in the study aren't yet legally required to comply with the regulations, OTA found that firms aren't prepared for even the most basic future compliance. In the case of CCPA, which goes into effect in January 2020, organizations must explicitly state how users can access their data and potentially request it to be deleted. OTA found that virtually none of the organizations surveyed currently have this language in place.

In another example, only 3.5% include more than one language for their privacy statement. And while 70% had a date stamp on their privacy statement to show the effective date, there was no consistency in where the date was located; 46% had the date at the top of the page, 22% placed it at the bottom, and 2% had a date stamp in both locations.

For more, read here.

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