News

Regulation (EU) 2018/1807 of 14 November 2018, which deals with “non personal data” in the framework of the EU’s digital single market strategy; it aims at removing obstacles to data mobility and the internal single market. In particular, it prohibits data localization requirements by place EU Member States in point of storage or processing of non-personal data, […]

  On February 27, 2019, the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a proposed stipulated order for civil penalties and other reliefs against Musical.ly for violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal information from kids without parental consent. The $5.7 million civil penalty is the FTC’s largest ever under COPPA. […]

On February 2, 2019, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) published a Survey on Device Fingerprinting. (“Survey“) “Device fingerprinting is the systematic gathering of information on a specific remote device with the aim of identifying, singling out and, thus being able to monitor its user’s activity for the purpose of profiling.” The data set extracted […]

On February 20, 2019, Bulgaria adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679, GDPR) harmonization law. The law amends and supplements the previous data protection act from 2002. It also transposes the EU Law Enforcement Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/680). The new Law on Personal Data Protection (LASLPDP) entered into force on March 2, 2019 […]

  On February 7, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust authority, prohibited Facebook from combining data concerning German Facebook users gathered also from third party websites when the user didn’t give voluntary consent to this practice. The decision concerns all private users of Facebook based in Germany. According to the Bundeskartellamt’s decision, until now, individuals […]

  On February 28, 2019, Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly passed the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). According to this source, the PDPA will be signed and endorsed by the monarch, and will then be published in the Government Gazette before to enter into force later this year. This article explains that the legislative text includes […]

Below a list of the harmonization laws enacted by each EU member state. Austria: the Datenschutz-Anpassungsgesetz 2018, the “Datenschutzgesetz“. Belgium: Framework Act (Dutch) Framework Act (French), DPA Act (Dutch), DPA Act (French) Croatia: Zakona O Provedbi Opće Uredbe O Zaštiti Podataka, the Act on Implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (Official Gazette no. 42/2018) Cyprus: Law n 125(I)/2018 Czech […]

  In February 2019 there have been reports of violations of health data affecting thousands of patients in US medical centers. One of the major breaches affected 974,000 patients at the University of Washington clinic (see here), while the other involved 326,000 users of UConn Health, a large medical center academic (see here). In both […]

  On February 12, 2019, Law no. 12/2019, converting into law the so called Decreto Semplificazioni (“Simplification Decree”), Legislative Decree No. 135/2018 was published on the Italian Official Gazette no. 36/2019. Among other provisions, the Simplification Decree defines the concept of “technologies based on distributed ledgers (blockchain)” and “smart contracts”. “Technologies based on distributed ledgers” are technologies and […]

On February 12, 2019 the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) warned that in the absence of an agreement between the EEA and the UK (no-deal Brexit), the UK will become a third country from 00.00 am CET on 30 March 2019. The EDPB provides 5 steps organizations that transfer data to the UK should take […]