Consumer Reports launched “Permission Slip” after California, and then other states like Connecticut enacted legislation giving consumers new privacy rights.
Connecticut is one of a handful of states with a Data Privacy Act.
Our law was enacted this summer and it gives residents certain control over their personal data, like the right to access the data that Connecticut businesses gather about us, the ability to delete the data they may have and the right to opt out of the sale of this data.
Perks of cleansing your data online include less targeted ads and decreased chances of your information being included in a data breach.
But, have you ever tried to hunt down what businesses have access to your personal data? And then tried to figure out how to opt out of the company’s policy that allows the sale of our personal data?
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It takes time. A study by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group, Consumer Reports found that it took a person 10 or 12 minutes to go through the process of opting out of just one company that is selling your data. Imagine doing that for thousands of companies.
Because of this, Consumer Reports has created a new tool that could potentially help us with that process
It created a free app called “Permission Slip” that helps track down what companies are collecting data about you and telling them to stop if that’s your wish.
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It's a solution to perhaps the biggest problem with data privacy when we don’t even know who has our information.
“Of course, we all have an understanding of which companies we do business with. I know where I shop. I know which websites I browse online. But there's also an entire industry of companies that is kind of searching for data about me, building profiles about me and selling those profiles to other companies. And that often happens kind of in the shadows of the data economy, far from the awareness of consumers,” said Ginny Fahs with Consumer Reports.
When you join the app, Permission Slip has you swipe through well-known companies you think may have accessed your data and it can identify companies you’ve probably never heard of either.
Of course, downloading yet another app comes with consumer concerns. Consumer Reports says you don’t have to give them a ton of information to do the work for you.
Fahs says the app sticks to a minimization principle, although it does have to gather some key identifiers about you when you create an account like your email address and your phone number to verify who you are and use those identifiers to contact the companies on your behalf.
