On Monday, Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight and Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act, bipartisan legislation that would require data harvesting companies such as social media platforms to tell consumers and financial regulators exactly what data they are collecting from consumers and how it is being utilized by the platform for profit.
“When a big tech company says its product is free, consumers are the ones being sold. These ‘free’ products track everything we do so tech companies can sell our information to the highest bidder and use it to target us with creepy ads,” Hawley said in a statement. “Even worse, tech companies do their best to hide how much consumer data is worth and to whom it is sold. This legislation gives consumers control of their data and will show them how much these ‘free’ services actually cost.”
