Americans Favor DSAR Right to Delete in Recent Poll

More than 90% of respondents said companies should delete a consumer’s personal information if requested, according to a Wall Street Journal / NBC survey of 1,000 people conducted a few weeks ago – March 23-27, 2019. The right to delete is one of the core aspects of both the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as under consideration as part of the Washington Privacy Act.

The corresponding data subject access rights (DSARs) – such as the right to access – were not part of the survey data that was published in the media report. However, there were a number of other statistics of interest for companies and their compliance departments. For example, over 90% of respondents also supported a business asking for consent before sharing or selling a consumer’s personal information.

Consent has been a huge issue in the discussions over privacy regulation in the federal government, with the question of whether opt-out or opt-in consent is right in general or for different situations. In the case of California’s CCPA, the legislature chose opt-out consent to allow consumers to tell businesses to stop the sale of their personal information.

There has also been a lot of discussion in the Congressional hearings about the impact of privacy regulation on the economics of the internet, which frequently uses an advertising model to support its services rather than a subscription model. Nevertheless, almost 75% of respondents in the survey found it unacceptable for consumers to trade detailed data about their online behavior for free services.

The issues that the federal government and states are working through right now are complex. Yet, it is clear that there is public support for those efforts. More than half of Americans said they aren’t satisfied with federal government regulation and oversight of social media companies.

They also clearly aren’t satisfied with the response of tech companies to all of the privacy scandals. More than half of respondents to the survey don’t trust Facebook at all to protect their personal information. The Wall Street Journal article concluded from the data about trust in Amazon, Google and Facebook that “Americans don’t trust tech companies to protect their data ….”

We have been closely following the legislation under consideration by federal and state governments. There has been a lot of controversy in the specific measures proposed. However, with support exceeding 90% for the right to delete, this seems like a core right that will be provided to consumers in any privacy legislation.

Other Relevant Posts:

Gartner Survey Identifies Top Privacy Priorities in 2019
Tangible Business Benefits from Data Privacy Investments – Cisco Study

More Resources:

Read the resources Clarip has posted on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and contact us to see a demo of the Clarip privacy management platform used by Fortune 500 clients.