The amount of data that several massive tech companies tend to collect from their users has become a source of controversy in the past few years. Many users are concerned because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up infringing upon their rights to privacy, and that’s something that some major corporations as well as lawmakers are starting to take heed of to one extent or another.
Apple’s update that turned off targeted tracking by default, with users having to opt in to make such a thing possible for an app, hurt a lot of ad based companies like Facebook. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that US lawmakers might be trying to introduce a bill that would further hamper data collection, or at the very least preventing tech companies from profiting off of this targeted data.
The bill is called the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, and it is being introduced by Democratic lawmakers in both the upper and lower houses of the US government. The main goal of this bill, if it gets signed off on and turned into a law, is prohibiting tech companies from targeting users based on their ethnicity, gender or any other particularly personal aspect of their data with religion playing a role in that as well.
Senator Corey Booker, one of the main proponents of this bill who helped draft it, called current targeting practices predatory. Brands would still be able to use things like location data as well as things that users interact with online to target ads, but more personal types of data would be banned from use. Legal institutions would be empowered to penalize companies that don’t follow this law, but it remains to be seen if it can get passed in the Senate.
Read next: Apple, Google Criticize Antitrust Measures Citing User Security
Apple’s update that turned off targeted tracking by default, with users having to opt in to make such a thing possible for an app, hurt a lot of ad based companies like Facebook. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that US lawmakers might be trying to introduce a bill that would further hamper data collection, or at the very least preventing tech companies from profiting off of this targeted data.
The bill is called the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, and it is being introduced by Democratic lawmakers in both the upper and lower houses of the US government. The main goal of this bill, if it gets signed off on and turned into a law, is prohibiting tech companies from targeting users based on their ethnicity, gender or any other particularly personal aspect of their data with religion playing a role in that as well.
Senator Corey Booker, one of the main proponents of this bill who helped draft it, called current targeting practices predatory. Brands would still be able to use things like location data as well as things that users interact with online to target ads, but more personal types of data would be banned from use. Legal institutions would be empowered to penalize companies that don’t follow this law, but it remains to be seen if it can get passed in the Senate.
Read next: Apple, Google Criticize Antitrust Measures Citing User Security