Consumers show more interest in exercising privacy rights

Consumers are exercising their privacy rights -- to access, delete or stop the sale of their data -- under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which came into force last year.

A new report from privacy platform DataGrail shows that consumers are increasingly concerned about their personal information and how it's used. It also reveals that the number of data subject requests (DSRs) companies receive varies wildly, depending on their privacy practices.

"With Apple leading a new charge on privacy and CCPA entering its enforcement stage, consumers are not only more aware of how their data is being used than ever before, they also realize, perhaps for the first time, that they have options to protect their information," says Daniel Barber, CEO and founder of DataGrail. "As more and more states explore data privacy legislation, and as tech leaders take on privacy issues, we anticipate the number of DSRs to increase in the coming year."

DataGrail fulfills data subject requests (DSRs) for millions of consumers, which gives it a unique insight into the number of requests a company can anticipate. The research shows most requests are to stop data being sold to third-parties, with 46 percent of DSR requests being to opt-out of data being sold, while a third of DSRs in 2020 were deletion requests.

The average B2C company received 137 DSRs per million identities in 2020. However, nearly half of all DSRs go unverified, which means the requester doesn't follow through to prove their identity. Many of these unverified requests are actually spam, costing companies time and money unnecessarily.

Organizations that use a form and a CAPTCHA tend to have significantly fewer unverified requests than organizations that merely ask customers to send an email. Also companies that update their privacy policies frequently had a tendency to experience a surge of requests after an update.

"The companies that are transparent and those that can win trust will be the big winners in the new privacy era," adds Barber. "Proactively embracing good privacy practices doesn't have to be a death sentence to profit margins. Forward-thinking companies have figured out how to make a strong privacy stance work for people and their business."

You can get the full report from the DataGrail site.

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