Craig Newmark Philanthropies and Omidyar Network announced a new partnership with Consumer Reports to advance consumer privacy and strengthen data rights in the United States. With additional support from these two organizations, Consumer Reports will work to further efforts to press for stronger consumer privacy laws and to pioneer new solutions that help consumers take control of their data.
One of CR’s top privacy priorities is the landmark California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect in January 2020. This first-in-the-nation privacy law grants California consumers important new rights, including the rights to access, delete, and stop the sale of their information. The CCPA also creates a new scope for innovation, including provisions that enable consumers to designate third parties as “authorized agents” that can submit access, deletion, and opt out requests on their behalf. This funding will help support the work of CR’s Digital Lab to better examine this provision, while advocating for stronger enforcement of the new law.
“We partnered with Craig Newmark Philanthropies to launch the Digital Lab just over one year ago to champion consumers’ digital rights and to build greater trust and accountability in the digital marketplace. We have made great strides in shining a light on opaque and harmful practices. This critical new investment will allow us to expose more hidden risks in the products and services we use everyday, push for new and improved consumer-centric rules and standards, and create powerful new tools to further empower people in the digital age,” said Marta Tellado, President and CEO at Consumer Reports.
With support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies and Omidyar Network, CR’s Digital Lab will prototype and test innovative tools and services to help consumers exercise these new rights. This work will help build the nascent technical ecosystem around data rights in the U.S., and identify new ways CR might enhance consumers’ individual privacy and increase transparency in the digital marketplace.
Read more about our partnership, here.
