Facebook allows companies to access your private data without consent. Uber has used big data to embarrass its enemies. Companies like Equifax and Yahoo have been hacked and your private information is no longer private. However, there may be a judicially derived solution out of a growing theory that allows users to not only take steps to protect the data companies collect during their use of technological devices, but ensure redress should anything go wrong. Once this solution is accepted, plaintiffs attorneys should be prepared to see an influx of privacy-derived cases with tort remedies.

Currently, privacy law in the United States is a messy “hodgepodge” of laws, rules and treaties with specific laws assigned to different industries leaving disjointed solutions. Included in the hodgepodge of privacy rules are state laws that are highly specific to industry, but used most common with private remedy. See e.g. 6 Pa. Code Section 11.197 (concerning adults in daily living centers having access to information); 31 Pa. Code Section 146b.11 (disclosing health information); 35 Pa. Stat. Ann. Section 5636 (disseminating data on cases of cancer); 28 Pa. Code. 28.5 (identifying when information about newborns are shared); 43 Pa. Stat. Ann. Sections 1321-1324 (inspecting personnel files); and 35 Pa. Stat. Ann. Sections 7601-7612 (keeping HIV-related information confidential).

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