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Looking back on 2023, the trend of privacy-based class actions has only increased, and it doesn’t seem poised to halt or even slow down in the new year. Businesses are feeling acutely the threat of future litigation. At the end of 2022, the hundreds of cross-industry respondents to the Annual Litigation Trends Survey cited cybersecurity, data protection, and data privacy as the second-highest ranked area of future concern for class actions, and their concerns turned out to be justified. From peeved Pixel plaintiffs to data breach defendants, class actions abounded this year.Continue Reading Dashing Through 2023’s Privacy Litigation Trends

lockThe European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has updated its Guidelines on GDPR consent to clarify that making access to a website conditional on accepting cookies – so-called “cookie walls” – does not constitute valid consent and that scrolling or swiping through a webpage cannot constitute consent either, under any circumstances.

Updated Guidelines

“Guidelines on consent under Regulation 2016/679” were first published in November 2017 by the EDPB’s predecessor, the Article 29 Working Party, and formally adopted in April 2018. The EDPB has now produced a slightly updated version of those Guidelines which, apart from two important clarifications, essentially remain the same. The clarifications appear in the sections of the Guidelines on “Conditionality” and “Unambiguous indication of wishes” and concern, respectively, the validity of consent provided by individuals when interacting with “cookie walls” and the question of scrolling or swiping through a webpage or similar user activity to indicate consent.
Continue Reading European Data Protection Board Updates Guidelines on GDPR Consent

CCPAThe California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect on January 1, 2020. Despite requests made by multiple trade associations for delay in the enforcement of CCPA due to COVID-19, the California Attorney General’s office has declined to delay enforcement, which is set to begin July 1, despite the AG’s failure to release final regulations.

The AG’s office first released proposed regulations in October 2019, our summary of the draft regulations can be found here. After the new year, the AG released two sets of modifications to the draft regulations on February 10 and March 11. At a privacy and data security conference last week, a staff member from the California state legislature commented that, due to the pressures and working circumstances created by COVID-19, the most recent version of the regulations, published March 11, are likely to be the version used for enforcement beginning in July. Significantly, the office rejected suggestions that the regulations be delayed because corporations are experiencing these same COVID-19 pressures.
Continue Reading CCPA Regulations Are Likely Final