67% Of US Websites Violate EU Data Protection Law: New Study

The European Union has passed several laws aimed at providing digital identity protection, among them the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in 2018.

Among the biggest violators of these protocols? American websites. According to one study, 67% of the top 1,000 websites in the United States were in violation of the GDPR.

The violations at work here vary, with 43% of websites not offering users the ability to opt out of selling data, 55% failing to notify users of cookies when they visit the site for the first time, and 32% of sites containing ad trackers.

The study pointed out that while GDPR exclusively concerns Europe, websites originating in the U.S. still sell goods and services to EU customers. This lack of compliance could have significant implications for companies unless they agree to modify their practices for European visitors. Fines for violations of the GDPR range from $80,000 to $120,000.

To help smaller app developers make sure they’re complying with the GDPR — and thus avoiding penalties they may not be able to afford — Google has launched a new platform called Checks, designed to automate GDPR compliance.

Developed by Google’s in-house incubator program, Area 120, Checks leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to scan code bases and evaluate them for privacy and other areas in which they may fall short of GDPR’s standards. In addition, the platform performs scans for compliance in the U.S. and Brazil, ensuring a significant portion of the world’s app developers are avoiding regulatory penalties.

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