{"id":337,"date":"2026-05-13T17:30:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/californiamovingreport.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds-2\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:30:37","slug":"websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/californiamovingreport.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/websites-break-california-privacy-law-at-industrial-scale-survey-finds-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Websites break California privacy law at \u2018industrial scale,\u2019 survey finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>A new audit has found that websites across the internet may be failing to abide by California privacy law, ignoring a requirement to not track visitors who set a privacy control.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/californiamovingreport.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/who-wants-to-be-californias-insurance-commissioner-your-guide-to-the-candidates-2\/\">Who wants to be California\u2019s insurance commissioner? Your guide to the candidates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The report, from researchers at webXray, a firm headed by a former Google privacy engineer, said the findings suggest major companies may be simply ignoring the law, and could point to \u201cindustrial-scale noncompliance with California requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The stakes are potentially high. WebXray estimates that if the California Privacy Protection Agency fined all of the websites it found failing to comply with the law, it could result in billions of dollars in penalties.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile we don\u2019t have comment on the finding of this specific report,\u201d Tom Kemp, executive director of the privacy protection agency, said in a statement, \u201cwe do appreciate that the report brings visibility to the importance of opt out rights.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Under California law, businesses are required to respect a signal called the Global Privacy Control. If users navigate the web with the control turned on \u2014 either through a setting in the browser or a third-party tool \u2014 it tells websites not to sell or share their personal information.<\/p>\n<p>The California Consumer Privacy Act requires businesses to acknowledge the control and to not track people who use it. The state privacy agency has fined companies millions for failing to honor the control, among other violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To understand whether the law is truly being respected, the researchers visited more than 7,000 popular websites from a California internet address. According to the report, major tech companies continued to track users, even with the signal turned on.<\/p>\n<p>Google continued to track users in 86% of cases despite receiving the signal, according to the report. When visitors traveled to the websites while using the signal, the sites still frequently set a cookie from Google to follow those visitors.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, according to the report, Microsoft failed to honor the signal in 50% of instances.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/californiamovingreport.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/how-tariffs-and-war-are-hurting-california-small-businesses-2\/\">How tariffs and war are hurting California small businesses<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The report found that trackers from Facebook parent company Meta don\u2019t just ignore the signal \u2014 they fail to check for it at all, leading to tracking 69% of the time despite the signal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All of those failures could be remedied with slight changes to the tracking code to respect the signal, the engineers said in the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey don\u2019t make any substantive effort to comply,\u201d said Tim Libert, founder and chief executive of webXray.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The report also found that third-party tools that purport to help businesses place advertisements that comply with the law still frequently failed to honor the anti-tracking signal. In one case, a product did not honor those requests more than 90% of the time, the report found.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The tech companies dispute the idea that they are failing to abide by the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs outlined in our Privacy Statement, when we receive a GPC signal, we opt the user out of sharing personal data with third parties for personalized advertising, and our advertising systems are designed to reflect that choice,\u201d Courtney Ramirez, a Microsoft spokesperson, said in a statement. \u201cCertain Microsoft cookies are necessary for operational purposes, and may therefore be placed and read even when a GPC signal is detected.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Jackie Bert\u00e9, a spokesperson for Google, said the company complies with the law and that the audit was \u201cbased on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our products work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Meta didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe idea that I misunderstand anything is a demonstrable falsehood,\u201d Libert said, pointing out his work on cookie policy at Google.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would assert that, when I was there, I knew more about it than anybody else,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/californiamovingreport.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/california-state-farm-violated-law-in-handling-of-l-a-fire-insurance-claims-3\/\">California: State Farm violated law in handling of L.A. fire insurance claims<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .entry-content --><br \/>\n<!-- .entry-footer --><br \/>\n<!-- .author-bio --><br \/>\n<\/article>\n<p><!-- #post-${ID} -->\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers found \u201cindustrial-scale non-compliance\u201d among tech companies with a California law mandating online privacy controls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-privacy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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