In July 2020, the Schrems II decision issued and the European Commission’s adequacy decision for the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework was invalidated.  Further, and broader than the invalidation of Privacy Shield adequacy decision, the Schrems II judgement found that US surveillance measures interfered with what are considered “fundamental rights” under EU law, i.e., the rights

Facebook, the parent company to WhatsApp, is reporting near-record low revenue growth. Thus, presumably in an effort to monetize WhatsApp more heavily, WhatsApp recently announced changes to its privacy policy: as of February 8, 2021, all WhatsApp users (except those that live in Europe) must agree to share their data with Facebook. If users do

The  Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was passed in 1991 and is known by many as the law that created the “do-not-call” rules.  The statute includes a number of restrictions related to telephone, text, and fact solicitations, including a prohibition against what is colloquially known as “autodialing” and “robocalls,” and it creates a private right

Last week, on July 16, 2020, Europe’s top court invalidated the EU-US data flow arrangement called Privacy Shield.  In a world with competing privacy regulations, many thousands of global businesses relied heavily Privacy Shield to conduct their business across EU-US borders (there are 5300+ current Privacy Shield participants, and the transatlantic economic relationship is valued

The question is – do wiretapping statutes apply in cases where there is no traditional third party interceptor?  And more practically speaking, how does an entity using plug-ins and cookies avoid liability under wiretapping statutes while there is so much uncertainty in the law?

We previously blogged about this issue In re: Facebook, Inc. Internet

Are targeted ads the result of wiretapping?  Companies track your browsing history all the time through the use of, inter alia, cookies, and then mine the data they receive for purposes like targeted advertising.  Because the cookies make the users computer send electronic communications without the users’ knowledge is this wiretapping?

Put differently, can a

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released its 2019 Privacy and Data Security Update, highlighting its enforcement actions in 2019 directed to the protection of consumer privacy and data security.

In the roundup of 2019 Privacy Cases, the Update highlights the FTC’s and the Department of Justice’s record $5 billion penalty imposed on Facebook—the largest

The number of actions to enforce the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) against a wide range of companies continues to rise.  Germany, a country where privacy enjoys strong legal protection, is establishing itself as a favorite jurisdiction for enforcement of the GDPR.  And, not surprisingly, Facebook is one of the companies in the