Data Points: Privacy & Data Security Blog

In June, Texas became the tenth state with a comprehensive privacy law. The Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (“TDPSA”) contains familiar provisions from other state privacy laws regulating the collection, use, processing, and treatment of consumers’ personal data, but also has Texas-specific provisions. The TDPSA will be effective as of July 1, 2024, allowing a one-year compliance period.

Invites to free webinars are not unsolicited advertisements, says Maryland federal court

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) prohibits sending an “unsolicited advertisement” to a fax machine, absent certain conditions. An “unsolicited advertisement” is “any material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person” without prior permission.

On its face, the TCPA’s definition seemingly would not include invitations to free seminars or webinars. However, in 2006 the Federal ...

California federal court rejects plaintiff’s attempt to circumvent Facebook

In April 2021, the Supreme Court dealt a massive blow to Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims based on automatic telephone dialing systems restrictions in its Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid ruling. You can read more about the Facebook decision here. In short, Facebook significantly narrowed the definition of “automatic telephone dialing systems,” thereby eliminating TCPA liability for voice calls—or text messages—produced by those systems. Facebook, however, did not limit liability for calls that used a prerecorded or artificial voice. But because text messages do not use prerecorded or artificial voices, Facebook was considered to largely (but not completely) wipe out TCPA liability for text messages.

Last month, the Supreme Court resolved a long-standing circuit split over the definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The highly-anticipated decision in Facebook v. Duguid narrowed the type of equipment that constitutes an ATDS, and therefore drastically limited the scope of “automated” calls and texts that violate the TCPA.  

Businesses are facing this system hack with ever-increasing frequency:  An accounts payable employee receives new or updated payment instructions from a vendor via email.  The email appears to be from a familiar counterpart at the vendor; it contains accurate details specific to a current transaction; the new bank is well known; and the new instructions have the vendor’s name, or a version of it, as the beneficiary.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018 marked the New York State Department for Financial Service’s deadline for compliance with several sections of cybersecurity regulation 23 NYCRR 500 (the “Regulation”).  The Regulation covers any organization that operates (or is required to operate) under a license, registration, charter, certificate, permit, accreditation, or similar authorization under the Banking Law (Title 3 of the NYCRR), the Insurance Law (Title 11 of the NYCRR), or the Financial Services Law (Title 23 or the NYCRR) (a “Covered Entity”).  This is the third compliance ...

By Bill Butler

Recently, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Attias v. CareFirst, Inc., No. 16-7108, that customers had standing to sue a health insurer for a 2014 data breach in which the customers’ information was stolen.  In reversing the district court’s dismissal of the class action, the D.C. Circuit held that the customers’ allegations that the hackers accessed and took their Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, and health insurance subscriber ID numbers were each independently sufficient to show actual or imminent injury.  The customers’ complaint ...

By Bill Butler

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) addressed the effect of the Cybersecurity Framework (“NIST Framework”) issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology on FTC enforcement actions under Section 5 of the FTC Act.  While there have been few enforcement actions to gauge the actual impact of the NIST Framework, the FTC’s recent public comment on the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (“NTIA”) proposed “coordinated vulnerability disclosure” template (“Template”) further ...