Top News: Instagram fined for children’s privacy violation, Walmart sued under BIPA, and more

European Commission proposes rules for IoT products

The European Commission has proposed the Cyber Resilience Act that will lay out the cybersecurity requirements for IoT devices and require stricter conformity assessment procedures for critical products. The regulation covers “product with digital elements,” defined as “any software or hardware product and its remote data processing solutions, including software or hardware components to be placed on the market separately.” Read More

Walmart sued under BIPA

A new lawsuit filed by an Illinois resident alleges that Walmart illegally used “cameras and advanced video surveillance systems” and a software database provided by Clearview AI, in violation of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). It claims that Walmart's Illinois stores have unlawfully collected, stored, and used biometric data without getting the customer’s informed written consent, or getting the proper data retention and destruction policies. Read More

Samsung faces class action lawsuit

Samsung has been hit with a class action lawsuit alleging that the company failed to protect consumers’ personal information following a data breach in its US-based systems in July. The company didn’t inform the impacted consumers about the breach until September. Read More

Instagram fined for children’s privacy violation

Meta-owned Instagram faces a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) by Ireland's data privacy regulator over an investigation into its handling of children's data. The investigation focused on users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to operate business accounts, which facilitated the publication of their phone number and/or email address. Read More

Data breach exposes data of 2.5M student loan accounts

A data breach at Nelnet Servicing compromised the data of over 2.5 million individuals with student loans from Oklahoma Student Loan Authority (OSLA) and EdFinancial. The exposed information includes the individuals’ full name, physical address, email address, phone number, and social security number. Read More