Privacy Initiatives

Advancing privacy best practices and operating independent, third-party accountability programs to help businesses and consumers navigate the digital marketplace


Businesses that collect personal information understand the critical need to comply with privacy and data protection laws. But from small startups to global enterprises, some businesses choose to do more: leading the way by demonstrating their embrace of privacy standards and best practices that set the tone for their industry.

 

BBB National Programs works with individual companies, industry groups, and regulators to develop, monitor, and enforce robust privacy standards. Our trusted privacy programs deliver independent accountability for privacy promises, whether built on self-regulatory principles or legal requirements, tailored to respond to the unique privacy challenges presented by specific data types, like children’s data, or use cases, such as emerging technologies and cross-border transfers.

 

Together our programs drive the adoption of unified privacy practices, facilitate consumer education and choice, and offer consumers accessible, no-cost privacy dispute resolution. Looking to the future, where new regulations and technologies bring new privacy challenges, BBB National Programs brings together stakeholders to craft enforceable and fair mechanisms that protect consumers in the marketplace, and enable responsible businesses to compete on trust and accountability. 

 

To learn more about our work—and to join in the effort—please check out the programs, initiatives, and resources below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Global Privacy Division

Through BBB National Programs’ Global Privacy Division, businesses show their partners and customers that they put privacy first, no matter where they operate. Our programs serve as key elements of frameworks like the Cross-Border Privacy Rules and Privacy Shield, bridging gaps between divergent privacy and data protection regimes. 

 

Thought Leadership 

Blog

The Next Phase of Privacy Shield

A new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework (TADPF) is on its way, lifting a cloud of uncertainty that has been hanging over Privacy Shield. TADPF serves as a foundation for a US adequacy decision reinstituting trans-Atlantic data flow. Here our Global Privacy Division highlights several key details regarding the substance of TADPF and the EU’s adequacy decision process.
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Blog

Protecting Consumer Health Data Privacy Beyond HIPAA

Many are taking advantage of apps and other technologies to keep better track of our health in some shape or form, but it is not always clear how the personal information we input is collected, safeguarded, and shared online.
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Blog

The TAPP Roadmap: Helping U.S. Companies Responsibly Collect and Manage Teenager Data

The TeenAge Privacy Program (TAPP) Roadmap was designed to assist any business that wishes to engage proactively with teen consumers, providing an operational framework to map the broad spectrum of potential harms impacting teens onto a concrete set of operational considerations.
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Blog

AI Can Be A Force For Good In Recruiting And Hiring New Employees

A challenge for rapid innovation in any industry is the ability for legal and regulatory requirements to keep pace. In the recruiting and hiring process, where AI provides aid to human decision-making and a welcome relief to managing a deluge of data, company leaders are asking themselves: How can we combine important technological innovation with a proactive approach to employment law requirements?
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Latest Announcements

Press Release

BBB National Programs’ Privacy Watchdog Issues Compliance Warning Regarding Consent for Interest-Based Advertising

McLean, VA – June 21, 2022 – BBB National Programs’ data privacy watchdog, the Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP), has issued a new compliance warning against the practice of inferring consent from a consumer’s passive use of a product or service following a notice of interest-based advertising (IBA).

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Press Release

Media Advisory: Sesame Workshop’s Michael Preston and U.S. Representative Kathy Castor to Keynote CARU 2022 Annual Conference

McLean, VA – April 26, 2022 – The Children’s Advertising Review Unit of BBB National Programs will host the virtual CARU 2022 Annual Conference May 10-11, 2022, featuring keynote speakers who will address how to create a better digital world for children and what the U.S. policy landscape looks like for the year...

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Decision

Moose Toys Discontinues its Fail Fix Dolls Advertising to Comply with Children’s Advertising Review Unit Guidelines on Negative Social Stereotypes

McLean, VA – August 10, 2022 – The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) has determined that Moose Toys product advertising to children for its Fail Fix Total Makeover Dolls failed to comply with CARU’s Advertising Guidelines, specifically a provision stating that advertising should not...

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Decision

Children’s Advertising Review Unit Finds Firefly Games in Violation of COPPA and CARU’s Advertising and Privacy Guidelines; Company Agrees to Corrective Actions

McLean, VA – August 2, 2022 – The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of BBB National Programs has found Firefly Games, owner and operator of the LOL Surprise! Room Makeover app, in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and CARU’s...

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Events