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You shop for shoes online and then ads for shoes seem to follow you to every website you visit.
Members of the House are aiming to add North Carolina to the list of states in which consumers can limit this kind of online shadowing and prevent their personal information from being sold for targeted ads or data mining.
House Bill 462 would allow consumers to confirm whether companies, called “controllers” in the bill, have their personal data. Consumers would be able to obtain their data, have it corrected, or have it deleted. Companies would have to tell consumers what third parties have their personal information.
Consumers would be able to say they don’t want their personal data sold, and to opt out of targeted advertising.
“For any company that is housing and keeping anyone’s data, they would have to be able to provide access to this data, even telling North Carolinians how their data is being used,” Rep. Terry Brown (D-Mecklenburg) told a House Judiciary committee. Brown is the lead sponsor of the bipartisan bill.
Nothing in the bill conflicts with federal law, he said.
Rep. Terry M. Brown, Jr. (Photo: NCGA)
Some social media companies would be required to have people younger than 18 obtain express consent from a parent or guardian before they can set up accounts.
The bill excludes some companies from the age requirement, including “a social media company that allows a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment in which the primary purpose is not educational or informative,” “a media company that exclusively offers interactive gaming, virtual gaming, or an online service,” and companies that provide information through subscriptions and whose primary purpose is not social interaction.
Since 2018, 19 states have passed data privacy laws, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals. North Carolina is one of a dozen states where legislators are actively considering such bills, according to the association.
The bill won unanimous committee approval on Tuesday.
The privacy measure is important now that consumer data is more readily available, Brown said after the committee meeting.
“We’ve all seen the targeted advertisements. They’re getting more and more pervasive and invasive. So, I want to do what we can to mitigate some of that,” he said.
Brown told the committee that he’d worked on the bill with the Bankers Association and the Healthcare Association and was in continuing talks with the Retail Merchants Association and individual companies.
The industry input won’t weaken the bill, Brown said later.
“My intent is to keep the teeth in this bill and to make sure that we’re protecting North Carolinians first and foremost,” he said. “But with any bill that I put forward, I want to make sure that I’m talking to the folks that are going to be impacted by it. And where we can reach a compromise, I’m always happy to do so.”