California 'Privacy Protection Agency' Targets Tractor Supply's Tricky Tracking (eff.org) 19
California's Privacy Protection Agency "issued a record fine earlier this month to Tractor Supply," according to an EFF Deeplinks blog post — for "apparently ducking its responsibilities under the California Consumer Privacy Act."
Under that law, companies are required to respect California customers' and job applicants' rights to know, delete, and correct information that businesses collect about them, and to opt-out of some types of sharing and use. The law also requires companies to give notice of these rights, along with other information, to customers, job applicants, and others. The CPPA said that Tractor Supply failed several of these requirements. This is the first time the agency has enforced this data privacy law to protect job applicants...
Tractor Supply, which has 2,500 stores in 49 states, will pay for their actions to the tune of $1,350,000 — the largest fine the agency has issued to date. Specifically, the agency said, Tractor Supply violated the law by:
- Failing to maintain a privacy policy that notified consumers of their rights;
- Failing to notify California job applicants of their privacy rights and how to exercise them;
- Failing to provide consumers with an effective mechanism to opt-out of the selling and sharing of their personal information, including through opt-out preference signals such as Global Privacy Control; and
- Disclosing personal information to other companies without entering into contracts that contain privacy protections.
In addition to the fine, the company also must take an inventory of its digital properties and tracking technologies and will have to certify its compliance with the California privacy law for the next four years.
The agency's web site says it "continues to actively enforce California's cutting-edge privacy laws." It's recently issued decisions (and fines) against American Honda Motor Company and clothing retailer Todd Snyder. Other recent actions include:
Tractor Supply, which has 2,500 stores in 49 states, will pay for their actions to the tune of $1,350,000 — the largest fine the agency has issued to date. Specifically, the agency said, Tractor Supply violated the law by:
- Failing to maintain a privacy policy that notified consumers of their rights;
- Failing to notify California job applicants of their privacy rights and how to exercise them;
- Failing to provide consumers with an effective mechanism to opt-out of the selling and sharing of their personal information, including through opt-out preference signals such as Global Privacy Control; and
- Disclosing personal information to other companies without entering into contracts that contain privacy protections.
In addition to the fine, the company also must take an inventory of its digital properties and tracking technologies and will have to certify its compliance with the California privacy law for the next four years.
The agency's web site says it "continues to actively enforce California's cutting-edge privacy laws." It's recently issued decisions (and fines) against American Honda Motor Company and clothing retailer Todd Snyder. Other recent actions include:
- Securing a settlement agreement requiring data broker Background Alert — which promoted its ability to dig up "scary" amounts of information about people — to shut down or pay a steep fine.
- Launching the bipartisan Consortium of Privacy Regulators to collaborate with states across the country to implement and enforce privacy laws nationwide.
- Partnering with the data protection authorities in Korea, France, and the United Kingdom to share information and advance privacy protections for Californians.
- The agency has secured more than half a dozen successful enforcement actions against unregistered data brokers following an investigative sweep launched late last year to assess compliance with the Delete Act.
Re: (Score:3)
Where else can I get my daily ivermectin dose without a prescription?
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That's the way our system works. Everyone commits crimes every day, which makes it so whoever is in charge for now can punish anyone at any time. Don't like it? Too bad. This is what you asked for.
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Crazy idea... (Score:2)
Do NOT use a loyalty card.
Pay cash.
Say nothing that doesn't NEED saying.
There.
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This is about job applicants and what Tractor Supply does with the personal information they collect.
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This is about both CUSTOMERS and job applicants.
Let's put it this way, if you are assigned a number on a card or required to login YOU ARE BEING TRACKED and your information is being collected.
And by the way many businesses no longer accept cash as a method of robbery prevention both by their employees and customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Oddly, last time I was at an obscure hipster restaurant (well, bar, really) in Brooklyn, they ONLY took cash.
Re: (Score:1)
> Do NOT use a loyalty card.
Pay more money for the stuff you need.
>Pay cash.
Don't collect any of the discounts from your credit card company either.
>Say nothing that doesn't NEED saying.
You do you, I suppose, but I can't see many people going for this arrangement.
Rounding error. (Score:3)
According to their own annual report [q4cdn.com] they "ended fiscal 2024 with $251.5 million in cash and cash equivalents" which makes this an insignificant fine. Fines that aren't proportional to profits are merely a cost of doing business. Properly implementing the system probably would have cost more than this fine.
Pathetic spammers, too (Score:3)
I have never done business with them and don't use the address they spam for commerce anyway. And they will not stop spamming you once they start. I just checked my mail log and they're still at it as of this morning.
Tractor Supply: more pathetic bottom-feeder trash doing anything for nickel.
and it will be appealed \ overturned (Score:2)
'Privacy Protection Agency' (Score:2)
Why the scare quotes? That's literally the name of the agency provided by the CPPA.