ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — If you have concerns about protecting your online privacy, lawmakers have moved forward with legislation that makes it where you can opt out of company's selling your data.
It's called the Florida Privacy Protection Act, and it applies to entities ranging from big tech to smaller businesses. Specifically, it applies to companies that process the data of 100,000 customers or more or smaller ones with 25,000 customers that make 50 percent or more of their money from selling data.
Those sites would need to be more transparent with you about what they do with your personal information.
“The bill is about putting up guardrails and setting minimum requirements,” Sen. Jennifer Bradley said. The sponsor from Orange Park added, “If they’re already doing that, there’s no further compliance that needs to be taken.“
Companies’ websites would have to have a button to make it easier to opt out of sharing your information. Some argue this could come at a big cost to businesses to comply. But Bradley says it could help because customers won't have to worry about what's happening with their data.
“The market for these data brokers and the way that they’re surveilling our activities on the internet just continues to innovate. There’s, there’s super cookies. There are all sorts of devices and pixels that get put on your computer that we don’t know about. It’s not a matter of consent because we don’t know they’re collecting and what they’re tracking,” Bradley said.
Critics of the bill say this shouldn’t be up to Florida lawmakers because there would be a patchwork quilt of laws about privacy across the country. California has a similar privacy bill. “In a perfect world, the federal government would act,” Bradley said.
The Senate swapped its version for the House one today, and it has to be heard again on the floor before the end of the session to pass.
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