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A federal judge in the Northern District of California delivered a blow to a potential class action lawsuit against Google over its ad auction practices. The lawsuit, which allegedly involved tens of millions of Google account holders, claimed Google’s practices in its real-time bidding (RTB) auctions violated users’ privacy rights. But U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers declined to certify the class of consumers, pointing to deficiencies in the plaintiffs’ proposed class definition. 

On December 1, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Bulletin to highlight the obligations of HIPAA-covered entities and business associates when using “online tracking technologies,” or what OCR describes as “script or code on a website or mobile…

During a much anticipated Open Commission Meeting announced by Commission Chair Lina M. Khan, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) voted in favor of issuing one new policy statement and one new report to Congress.

First, the Commission unanimously voted in favor of issuing a policy statement on FTC initiatives…

Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) is alive and well as a potential breeding ground for litigation for tech companies. In the last month, two settlements have been announced in class actions where the plaintiffs alleged violations of BIPA in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. These settlements show that companies collecting biometrics should take care to ensure that their practices do not run afoul of BIPA’s requirements.

A previous blog post discussed FTC Chairwoman Slaughter’s first priority as the newly designated chairwoman – the COVID-19 pandemic. The FTC’s second priority, racial equity, can be broken down into two sub issues. First, the FTC plans to investigate biased and discriminatory algorithms that target vulnerable communities. As the FTC acknowledges, the analysis of data can help companies and consumers, “as it can guide the development of new products and services, predict the preferences of individuals, help tailor services and opportunities, and guide individualized marketing.”  Nonetheless, the FTC cautions companies to consider the below before making decisions based on the results of big data analysis.

On January 21, 2021, President Biden designated Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC”) Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as acting chair of the FTC. Soon thereafter in one of her first speeches in her new role, Chairwoman Slaughter announced two substantive areas of priority for the FTC – the COVID-19 pandemic and racial equity.

Proskauer litigation associate Courtney Bowman and Jonathan Reardon, head of the Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia office of the Middle East-based firm Al Tamini & Co., recently co-authored an article published by Bloomberg about Saudi Arabia’s draft cloud computing regulations.  The article analyzes the draft regulations and their potential impact on…