You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

—Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems, 1999

You may have had the experience of visiting a website like TripAdvisor to compare hotel rates, only to be flooded by Internet ads from hotels in your favorite vacation city for weeks thereafter. This experience demonstrates the power of Internet advertising in that it can accurately target buyers of goods or services. However, the distress many of us feel is a loss of personal privacy from simply using our computers in daily life. One practical response has been the enactment of laws to protect everyone's privacy. In the United States, privacy protections are found in laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (the CCPA). In the European Union, even stricter rules are set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR). An overriding goal of laws like the CCPA and the GDPR is to give the individual control over their personal data.