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Global Privacy Control is a new initiative to help people enforce their rights

CCTV camera looking at people

Several companies and individuals have today launched the Global Privacy Control (GPC), an initiative that seeks to help users enforce their rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The backers say that the new rights mean nothing if it's too difficult for people to benefit from them.

Those backing the Global Privacy Control include Ashkan Soltani from Georgetown Law, Sebastian Zimmeck from Wesleyan University, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Automattic (WordPress.com and Tumblr), Glitch, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Mozilla, Disconnect, Abine, Digital Content Next (DCN), Consumer Reports, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The GPC’s backers said that the CCPA gives Californians a legal right to opt-out of the sale of their data, they can do this by having their browser signal to businesses that they’ve opted out. Unfortunately, there’s no defined or accepted technical standard for these signals so users don’t have an easy way to inform businesses of their preferences.

The group has launched an experimental phase where people can download browsers and extensions from Abine, Brave, Disconnect, DuckDuckGo, and EFF in order to tell participating publishers that they do not want their data to be shared. Going forward, those behind GPC want to develop an open standard that many organisations can finally support; they’re now in the process of finding the best venue to make this proposal.

The GPC’s backers said they look forward to working with California’s Attorney General to make the GPC legally binding under CCPA. In addition, they’re looking to make the GPC applicable under other laws around the world such as the GDPR.

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