In today’s fast-paced world, your private, sensitive and valuable personal information – everything from your biometric identifiers to the tabs you click when visiting a website – is being collected, used and disseminated by the second. Alarmingly, even the medical data and private communications you have with your healthcare provider on its website is often being shared with third parties, which then use this information to generate targeted advertising for profit. And new ways to acquire and monetize this kind of information, which is usually collected in secret, are being developed all the time.

Whether it’s fingerprints, facial recognition, online search history, credit card information, social security numbers or something else, the vast majority of Americans have some personal data stored in cyberspace. If not protected in accordance with industry standards, personal information is at risk from third parties and criminals seeking to monetize your data, sell it on the black market or foreign governments tracking and gathering information on American citizens.

There are federal and state laws in place to protect personal information and recourse when not collected and stored properly.

Two such laws are the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) and the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”).