{"id":237074,"date":"2026-04-29T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/29\/websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T12:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:00:09","slug":"websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/29\/websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Websites break California privacy law at \u2018industrial scale,\u2019 survey finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Websites break California privacy law at \u2018industrial scale,\u2019 survey finds<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.daylightsandiego.org\/websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-29 11:54:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.daylightsandiego.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Tech companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are ignoring data controls mandated under California law, researchers say.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Written by Colin Lecher, CalMatters<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up\u00a0for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0new audit\u00a0has found that websites across the internet may be failing to abide by California privacy law, ignoring a requirement to not track visitors who set a privacy control.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report, from researchers at webXray, a firm headed by a former Google privacy engineer, said the findings suggest major companies may be simply ignoring the law, and could point to \u201cindustrial-scale noncompliance with California requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stakes are potentially high. WebXray estimates that if the California Privacy Protection Agency fined all of the websites it found failing to comply with the law, it could result in billions of dollars in penalties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we don\u2019t have comment on the finding of this specific report,\u201d Tom Kemp, executive director of the privacy protection agency, said in a statement, \u201cwe do appreciate that the report brings visibility to the importance of opt out rights.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under California law, businesses are required to respect a signal called the Global Privacy Control. If users navigate the web with the control turned on \u2014 either through a setting in the browser or a third-party tool \u2014 it tells websites not to sell or share their personal information.<\/p>\n

The California Consumer Privacy Act requires businesses to acknowledge the control and to not track people who use it. The state privacy agency\u00a0has fined companies millions for failing to honor the control, among other violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To understand whether the law is truly being respected, the researchers visited more than 7,000 popular websites from a California internet address. According to the report, major tech companies continued to track users, even with the signal turned on.<\/p>\n

Google continued to track users in 86% of cases…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Websites break California privacy law at \u2018industrial scale,\u2019 survey finds https:\/\/www.daylightsandiego.org\/websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-29 11:54:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.ghost.io\/c\/18\/55\/18550d27-4856-4fa7-9f92-33639d54bd38\/content\/images\/size\/w1200\/2026\/04\/motherboard.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-237074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy","tag-california-consumer-privacy-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237076,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237074\/revisions\/237076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}