Massachusetts has passed legislation that prohibits companies from selling precise location data about residents. The new privacy rights bill establishes broad restrictions on how businesses handle location information collected from smartphones and other devices.
The law represents a blanket ban across the state, preventing companies and startups from selling precise location data that tracks where individuals go. This type of data has become increasingly valuable to advertisers, data brokers, and analytics firms, who use it to build detailed profiles of consumer behavior and movement patterns.
The legislation positions Massachusetts among a small group of states taking direct action on location data privacy. While several states have passed comprehensive privacy laws in recent years, few have implemented outright bans on selling precise location information. The Massachusetts approach goes further than laws requiring consent or opt-out mechanisms by prohibiting the sale of this data entirely.
Precise location data differs from general location information by pinpointing where someone is within a few meters, rather than just identifying their city or region. This granular tracking has raised concerns among privacy advocates, who argue it can reveal sensitive details about people's lives, including visits to medical facilities, places of worship, or political gatherings. The data can also be used to identify where people live and work.
The bill's passage comes as lawmakers nationwide grapple with how to regulate the rapidly growing data broker industry. Companies have built billion-dollar businesses around collecting and selling personal information, often without explicit knowledge from the individuals being tracked. The Massachusetts law aims to close one avenue for this data collection by making it illegal to sell precise location information about state residents, regardless of how it was obtained or what purpose it serves.