BY: Michael Sutton<\/p>\n
In 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (\u201cCFPB\u201d) began investigating Big Tech companies offering digital payment services, including Apple, Google, and Facebook. The CFPB ordered them to produce information regarding personal financial data use and access management. The CFPB\u2019s primary concerns were behavioral targeting or sale of data to third parties, the potential for exclusion of certain merchants, and how companies are protecting customers under existing laws. All of this often results in the phenomenon known as digital resignation, which is the feeling of helplessness when \u201cpeople desire to control the information digital entities have about them but feel unable to do so.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The CFPB has since pushed to bring Big Tech companies under the \u201cfinancial institution\u201d umbrella. In a summary of an Outline of Proposals and Alternatives, the CFPB labels financial institutions and credit card issuers \u201ccovered data providers,\u201d whose actions are subject to the authority of the Bureau. The proposal would thus require the companies to make consumer financial data \u201cavailable to a consumer, upon request.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One option the CFPB has considered proposing is \u201cthat covered data providers would be required to make available all the information\u2026 through online financial account management portals,\u201d which they refer to as \u201cthird party access portals.\u201d It is not that data should not be shared, but that it should be the choice of the consumer to share data with a third party, like a competing service provider.<\/span> The proposal highlights how companies are able to hold data hostage and retain customers through the manufactured inconvenience of switching providers. The proposed rule would force providers to \u201cearn [and retain] customers through competitive prices and high-quality service,\u201d driving home the implicit point that this is not only a consumer rights issue, but an antitrust issue.<\/span><\/p>\n The CFPB has made it clear that \u201ccovered data providers\u201d under its proposal are subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, meaning the proposed third-party access portals would be governed by the Act. It is important to see laws like this and Electronic Fund Transfer Act (\u201cEFTA\u201d) as backbones to reinforce new regulations as opposed to past standards which have to change with the times; the CFPB has specified that its proposed rules will not interfere with the rights guaranteed by such laws, especially the right to digital error resolution and protection from unauthorized transfers afforded by the EFTA.<\/span><\/p>\n The proposal does an adequate job addressing the Bureau\u2019s concerns. One must wonder, still, whether it adequately addresses the concerns of consumers. Certainly, ownership over one\u2019s data is important. The existence of portals would be an improvement, but it seems unlikely to combat digital resignation in the average consumer without a simultaneous concerted effort to educate those consumers as to the role they can play in controlling their data. Even with education efforts, many consumers would likely see this development as another layer of complexity contributing to further feelings of confusion and helplessness. There is not an easy solution here. The CFPB has outlined some intriguing rules with a focus on Big Tech, but if it wants to make an even more widespread impact, it should consider a greater focus on the consumers\u2014the human beings\u2014who are at the center of all of this.<\/span><\/p>\n Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n BY: Michael Sutton In 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (\u201cCFPB\u201d) began investigating Big Tech companies offering digital payment services, including Apple, Google, and Facebook. The CFPB ordered them to produce information regarding personal financial data use and access management. The CFPB\u2019s primary concerns were behavioral targeting or sale of data to third parties, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1869,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions\/1869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rbfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n