The California Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced a settlement with The Walt Disney Company for violations regarding consumer privacy.
“California Won’t Let It Go”: Attorney General Announces Largest CCPA Settlement in State History
The California Attorney General’s Office announced a $2.75 million settlement with The Walt Disney Company on Wednesday, February 11, resolving allegations that Disney violated the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
The suit stemmed from a DOJ investigation into Disney’s data-privacy practices for its streaming services, alleging that the company failed to honor consumer requests to opt-out of the sale or sharing of their personal information across all devices and services linked to a single Disney account.
Under the proposed settlement, Disney must pay civil penalties and implement robust opt-out mechanisms that fully stop the sale or sharing of consumer data when requested.
Attorney General Rob Bonta emphasized that opt-out rights under California’s privacy law should be simple and effective:
“Consumers shouldn’t have to go to infinity and beyond to assert their privacy rights. Today, my office secured the largest settlement to date under the CCPA over Disney’s failure to stop selling and sharing the data of consumers that explicitly asked it to … California’s nation-leading privacy law is clear: A consumer’s opt-out right applies wherever and however a business sells data — businesses can’t force people to go device-by-device or service-by-service. In California, asking a business to stop selling your data should not be complicated or cumbersome. My office is committed to the continued enforcement of this critical privacy law.”
The state DOJ’s investigation found that Disney’s existing opt-out methods were incomplete: toggle switches often applied only to individual services or devices, webforms limited opt-out to Disney’s own advertising channels while still selling data through embedded third-party ad tech, and support for the Global Privacy Control (GPC) was restricted by device rather than account-wide.
Notably, this enforcement action represents the largest CCPA settlement in California history and marks at least the seventh privacy-law enforcement action by the Attorney General’s Office.
Prior settlements under the CCPA include agreements with companies such as Sephora, DoorDash, Jam City, Sling TV, Healthline.com, and Tilting Point Media. The DOJ continues to conduct investigative sweeps targeting privacy compliance across industries.
Disney has not officially commented on the settlement announcement as of writing.
For more details on the settlement and the inciting investigation, you can check out the original post from the California DOJ.
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