Top News – Carta shuts trading platform, New Jersey’s comprehensive privacy bill, and more

Carta shuts a part of its business following privacy breach allegations

Software company Carta shuts a part of its business after facing allegations of trying to trade customers' trades without consent. There were also allegations that the company’s employees used confidential information to solicit some investors into selling their stakes. A statement from the company’s chief executive read that the company prioritizes trust and decided to shut down the secondary trading business. Read more

New Jersey passes a comprehensive privacy bill

The New Jersey Legislature passed the Senate Bill 332 on January 8, which received the Senate approval in December 2023. Some notables of the Bill include unique provisions for children's privacy and universal opt-out mechanisms. The rule-making authority would be the Attorney General. The bill would take effect a year after the enactment date and awaits final approval from the Governor. Read more

FTC bars data broker from selling sensitive location information

Data broker X-Mode Social and its successor Outlogic are barred by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from sharing or selling sensitive location information as a part of a settlement. The FTC alleged that the companies sold precise location information that could be used to track people’s visits to sensitive places like clinics, domestic abuse shelters, and religious worship places. The settlement requires the companies to delete all the sensitive location data collected previously and provide easy systems for customers to opt out of geolocation tracking. Read more

Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account hacked raises security concerns

The U.S SEC’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) was hacked, and the hackers posted false information related to the SEC’s widely anticipated bitcoin-related announcement, spiking the cryptocurrency’s value. Following a preliminary investigation, X confirmed that the compromise happened as someone gained access to a phone number linked to it, and that SEC didn’t have MFA enabled then. Read more

Microsoft offers regional storage for EU cloud customers

Microsoft said that its cloud customers from the European Union would be able to process and store personal information in the region as a part of its phased roll-out plan to comply with privacy and security rules. Earlier, the company allowed the processing of some data, and this phase would also include system-generated logs. In the next phase later this year, Microsoft plans to deal with temporary data transfers. Read more