Consumer Reports: Companies Make It Hard to Access Your Personal Data Under State Privacy Laws, CR Finds
A Consumer Reports investigation found that companies frequently obstruct consumers trying to exercise their personal data rights under state privacy laws. Experts note that fines and warning letters may do little to change behavior at large data companies, which reportedly treat noncompliance as a manageable business cost.
Why this matters: State privacy laws gave you rights on paper. This shows those rights are hard to use in practice. If a company can just absorb the fine and ignore your data request, the law mostly protects the company's reputation, not you. The enforcement gap here is not an accident. When penalties are small and predictable, noncompliance becomes a line item. That is not a technical problem. It is a political choice about whether privacy rights have any teeth.
Who should care: Lawyers · Privacy officers · Compliance · General readers · Policy
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