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Microsoft to uphold Privacy Law not only in California

Written by Marcos Xochihua | Nov 14, 2019 1:07:00 AM

Microsoft said in a post today that it would apply California's upcoming strict privacy legislation across the US. So Non-Californians get the benefits. The California Consumer Privacy Act or the CCPA is planned to go into effect on January 1, 2020. This law is going to be the most restrictive privacy legislation to date. 

The CCPA didn't go well with all the California-based tech companies. The law bites a big chunk of the companies revenue which is user’s data. Which they sell to advertisers. Now they MUST provide an option for consumers to opt-out of their data being sold.

 The CCPA came under heavy protest from companies. Their efforts have been to delay the law as much as possible. While asking Congress to pass a federal national law to overrule the much stricter CCPA.

 Yet California officials ignored the protests and intend to go through with enforcing the CCPA starting next year.

"We are strong supporters of California's new law and the expansion of privacy protections in the United States that it represents," said Julie Brill, Microsoft's chief privacy officer. (ZDnet)

 "Our approach to privacy starts with the belief that privacy is a fundamental human right and includes our commitment to provide robust protection for every individual. This is why, in 2018, we were the first company to voluntarily extend the core data privacy rights included in the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to customers around the world, not just to those in the EU who are covered by the regulation," she added. (ZDnet)

 "Similarly, we will extend CCPA's core rights for people to control their data to all our customers in the U.S." (ZDnet)

“If Microsoft enforces the CCPA as it's supposed to be enforced remains to be seen. Even if Microsoft applied the GDPR legislation to all its users across the globe, that doesn't mean the company is doing a good job about it. Currently, the company is under investigation in the EU for skirting some of the GDPR terms for its cloud services.” (Cimpanu)

To have such a big company step forward is a breath of fresh air. I think more company giants step forward with this as I would like to see something like the CCPA come out of congress.

Reference

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-apply-californias-privacy-law-for-all-us-users/

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