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Your Data Privacy Rights In Texas

Date
Author
Ann Baddour and Briana Gordley

So much of what we do on our mobile phones, online, and through apps is being tracked, captured, and even packaged and sold. These data collection practices can be invasive, compromise personal privacy, and enable scammers.

In promising news, Texans were afforded new rights on July 1, 2024, to control their personal data through the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, which covers most businesses that collect our personal information. Under this new law, Texans are able to see what data certain businesses collect about them, correct anything that is wrong, ask businesses to delete their data, and opt out of the collection and sale of their data.

Texas law grants five key rights:

  • Right to Access: You can request a copy of the personal information covered businesses have collected about you.
  • Right to Data Portability: You can request a copy of your personal information from a business that can be transferred to another business in an readily usable format. For example, this feature allows you to export your contact list from one email platform and import them into another email platform.
  • Right to Correct: You can request that a business correct inaccuracies in the personal information it has collected about you.
  • Right to Delete: You can request that a business delete the personal information it has collected about you.
  • Right to Opt Out: You can opt out of businesses selling your personal information to advertisers and other third parties.

You can learn how to access these rights by going to the privacy policy of the business, app, or website of your choice, and searching for words like “opt,” “privacy,” “control,” or “rights,” to find the section of the policy that gives instructions on how to access your rights.

You may also want to use your data privacy rights to control personal data collected by data brokers. Data brokers collect and sell our data, often without clear limits on what they can collect and who they sell to. Learn more about data brokers here.

Technology is getting more powerful by the day, with sophisticated artificial intelligence models and other technologies that often rely on our data as the engine driving them. We hope you will access your rights now.

Check out this short video below for more information about accessing your rights.