Jan 16, 2026

Why the January 1st Privacy Laws are a Tipping Point

Without a single federal law like Europe’s GDPR, the U.S. has relied on a growing patchwork of state-level protections to protect consumer data.

On January 1, 2026, Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island officially joined the fold, bringing the total to 20 states. This signals a quiet but significant shift in the American digital landscape.

Crossing the 20-state threshold means that over half of the U.S. population is now covered by some form of data protection—creating a de-facto national standard. Most companies don't want to build 50 different versions of their website, so to avoid the headache of state-by-state compliance, many businesses are adopting the strictest state’s rules as their nationwide policy.

While each state has its own type of regulation, they all share a common goal: giving control back to residents over their personal information. This has created momentum for four key changes in the digital landscape:

1) The Right to Know

In the past, companies could collect your data, keep it forever, and sell it to anyone without telling you. Now, in 40% of the country, that is illegal. Even if you live in a state without digital privacy laws, you are likely seeing "Your Privacy Choices" links on websites because companies are streamlining their operations to match these 20 states.

In states like Rhode Island, there is a big shift in corporate accountability. For example, companies that sell personal data must now disclose the identities of the third parties they sell to. This level of transparency is becoming the new baseline.

2) The Right to Opt Out

Nearly all 20 states now require opt-in consent for sensitive data. This means a company cannot track your precise GPS location, your health status, or your biometric data unless you specifically click "yes." What this changes in practice still remains a big question; these consent clauses are typically buried in a 50-page Terms of Service that no one reads.

Additionally, people must be able to opt-out from companies selling their data or using it for targeted ads. Taking that a step further, states like Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon and Maryland are requiring companies to honor "Universal Opt-Out Signals." This means instead of clicking "no" on every website, you can flip one switch in your browser, and the law requires every site to respect that "do not track" command.

3) The Right to Delete

Personal data has often been treated as a permanent "digital footprint" that follows an individual forever—even after they’ve stopped using an app or service. Having the right to delete legally requires companies to scrub personal information from their servers upon request. This isn't just about deleting an account; it’s about forcing companies to go into their data vaults and erase the underlying traces of individual identity.

Some of these new laws also introduce a "flow-down" obligation. If a business deletes an individual’s data, they must also notify third-party apps and service providers they shared it with to do the same. In California, 2026 marks the launch of the Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform (DROP), allowing residents to send a single deletion request to every registered data broker at once. The goal is to end the "whack-a-mole" game where consumers had to contact hundreds of individual companies to clear their digital footprint. However, California developed a protracted, bureaucratic process for implementation, and there are private market solutions that are already doing this better under the existing legal structure.

4) The Right to Correct

Data is rarely a perfect reflection of reality, but for years, consumers had no way to know or edit the digital dossiers being built about them. The Right to Correct ensures that if a company has inaccurate or outdated information, individuals have the power to correct it. This is crucial because companies use data for individual profiling—automated systems that make important decisions about individuals’ lives, including eligibility for a loan, the cost of insurance, or suitability for a job.

An incorrect "risk score" or a mistaken health diagnosis in a database can have real-world consequences that follow people for years. By exercising this right, individuals ensure that the digital you matches the real you. Under the new frameworks in Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island, businesses must not only correct the error in their own systems but also ensure that corrected data isn't overwritten by old data from third-party sources later on—moving the responsibility of data accuracy from the shadows into the light of consumer oversight.

Now for the Reality Check…

Despite these legal milestones, there is a massive gap between what the law mandates and what the hardware actually does. We can’t assume that a legal right to opt out translates to a technical reality. For instance, independent tests by cybersecurity firm Raxis revealed that even when a user explicitly selects "Ask App Not to Track" on an iPhone, the device continues to leak massive amounts of data in the background. If the industry’s gold standard for privacy still harvests data without you knowing, then legal permissions remain dangerously murky.

These laws are an essential step, but they often rely on the honor system—trusting big tech to follow the rules while they continue to operate within complex, proprietary systems that the average consumer (and even the average regulator) cannot understand or see into.

From Regulation to Technological Safeguards

While these laws are a win for consumer rights, regulation alone will not ensure data privacy. It will only be a reality when we move from "privacy as a polite request" to "privacy as a hard requirement.” But as state borders become the new front lines of data protection, we must recognize that a law can be repealed, a loophole can be found, and a dark pattern—like burying the opt-out links in small text and making the “Accept All” button big and bright so you click it without thinking—can be designed. We shouldn’t have to rely on a "Right to Delete" if companies never get personal data in the first place.

By moving beyond mere compliance and innovating and adopting tools that prioritize encryption and decentralization, we aren't just following the law; we’re making the violations of our privacy technically impossible.

The law is setting the floor, but technology will set the ceiling.

Frequently Bought Together

1) The Right to Know

2) The Right to Opt Out

3) The Right to Delete

4) The Right to Correct

From Regulation to Technological Safeguards