Location Data Industry under investigation by CA AG, Search Engine DuckDuckGo to use GenAI, and more.

Honda to change business practices and pay $630k fine to CPPA

The California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) issued an order against American Honda Motor Co. for violating the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The CPPA alleged that the motor company made Californians provide excessive personal information (PI) to exercise their data subject access rights such as right to opt-out of sale or sharing and right to limit, used a tool that didn’t offer privacy choices in an equal way, made it difficult for ‘authorized agents’ to exercise privacy rights and for selling PI to AdTech companies without producing necessary contracts that contain terms to protect privacy. Honda has agreed to utilize a simpler process for subject access requests and consult a user experience designer to evaluate their subject access request tool and methods in addition to their $632,500 fine. Read more.

Investigative sweep of location data industry announced by Rob Bonta

California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, has sent letters to advertising networks, mobile app providers, and data brokers that are alleged to be in violation of the CCPA as part of an investigative sweep of the location data industry. The aim of the investigation is to uncover how businesses offer and handle consumers’ subject access request rights; right to stop the sale and sharing of personal information and their right to limit the use of their sensitive personal information, which includes geolocation data. Read more.

Google Maps Timeline Data feature to be removed

Google Maps’ Timeline Data feature that saves all visit and route data will be deleted unless users change their privacy settings before May 18th. Users that had this feature, that saved users’ location history by allowing you to see the locations you’ve been to and the routes used, turned on, would have received a notification from Google about how this feature is changing. It’s important to note that until action is taken by the users, devices will continue saving location data and Google will continue using it. Read more.

NY AG imposes $650,000 penalty on app developer

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a settlement with Saturn Technologies, developer of Saturn, an app catered towards high school students that allows them to create personal calendars, correspond with other members, and make and join groups. This app claimed to only allow students of the same school to interact with each other. However, investigation found that the app failed to verify users’ school email and age, hence failing to protect their safety and privacy. Read more.

DuckDuckGo to use GenAI

Search engine DuckDuckGo’s AI assistance service, called DuckAssist is currently exiting beta. This means that users will be able to obtain generative AI answers to search questions instead of the previously used method of displaying hyperlinks. They initially launched a chatbot style interface last year called DuckDuckGo AI Chat, however the name has since changed to Duck.ai. Access to Duck.ai is currently free but with a limit on daily queries. Read more.