Companies operating in New Jersey will have to inform consumers when they are collecting their personal information online — and allow them to opt out — starting in mid-2025.
New Jersey becomes the 13th state to pass similar data privacy rules, and several other state legislatures have pending bills. But some business leaders and the state’s largest press organization say New Jersey’s new requirements go further than other states, and language in the bill may open the door to excessive litigation.
Any website that collects data from more than 100,000 people per year is now required to inform each consumer and provide an opt-out option, according to the bill, which Gov. Phil Murphy signed on Jan. 17. The threshold is lowered to 25,000 consumers a year if the website is selling personal data.
State data privacy laws have come under fierce lobbying efforts by tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Meta. The companies spent more than $50 million in 2022 on federal lobbying around issues such as privacy and competition, and a federal bill to institute similar protections stalled out in 2022 after receiving bipartisan support, Bloomberg reported last year. The tech companies have also heavily lobbied state legislators.
New Jersey’s law is considered one of the strictest in the nation, according to state Sen. Raj Mukherji, a Jersey City Democrat, who sponsored the bill in the last legislative session, when he was an assemblymember.
“It has the strongest universal opt-out mechanism of any data privacy law in the country,” Mukherji said. “And it just puts consumers back in control of their own data.”
In general, when a website complies with a state’s privacy laws, a message appears informing the user that personal data is being collected, and providing an opportunity to opt out. The data collected can range from highly personal information collected on a dating or health app to information about what a person reads, buys or subscribes to online.
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