Data Privacy Trends in 2026: Looking Forward
As always, the start of a new year signifies changes to data privacy and privacy laws in the United States. As the digital world continues to change and evolve, more regulations are created and existing ones are altered to address new issues or discoveries. Each year, the risk for data privacy increases. And, in the absence of a clear federal privacy law, states lead the way on their individual plans to deal with data privacy.
In this blog, we will discuss what to expect in terms of data privacy in 2026 and how it will reshape the way businesses handle personal info, compliance, etc.
Privacy Enhancing Technology
PET (privacy enhancing technology) will drive markets in 2026. Ensuring that customers have privacy is a chief concern this year. These types of technologies continue to be developed daily and are used to safeguard data. They include…
Anonymization: a data processing technique that removes or modifies personal identifiers.
Cryptographic techniques: Allows companies to analyze encrypted data, so you can get results without looking at raw data.
Secure multi-party computation: allows multiple different parties to input their private data and compute it jointly. This protects each party’s data from the others.
Trusted executive environments: Protects data from the main code by creating an isolated processing environment.
Cookieless Tracking
The decline of third-party cookies has forced a fast shift to privacy-compliant measurement approaches. Organizations that leverage first-party data strategies achieve 2.9 times better retention of customers and a higher ROI. Behavioral profiling alternatives are also being used more. One of these includes contextual targeting, which matches advertisements with page content rather than personal tracking, which reduces dependence on personal data.
European Impact
European lawmakers have shifted from establishing rules to operationalizing them. The EU AI Act’s full implementation will take place in August 2026 which prohibits eight unacceptable practices including harmful manipulation and untargeted facial recognition scraping. Non-compliance triggers fines up to 7% of global annual turnover.
This is significant because often the U.S. will take inspiration from Europe when deciding on privacy laws and vice versa. If the U.S. decides to make federal laws, it is common to assume we might draft laws similar to what the E.U. has already been enacted, depending on their success.
States Enacting New Privacy Laws this Year
Kentucky, Indiana, and Rhode Island have kicked off the New Year with comprehensive consumer data privacy laws. The Kentucky Consumer Data Privacy Act, the Indiana Consumer Data Protection Act, and the Rhode Island Data Transparency Act all reflect the momentum that is getting stronger at the state level for privacy, and these three states bring the grand total to 19 with consumer privacy laws in place.
All three of these laws operate in similar ways, with varying levels of thresholds. They all apply to companies that do business in the state and process data from a certain number of residents and derive a certain percentage of their annual revenue from the sale of personal information.
Additionally, California has been making large steps toward privacy recently, issuing up to $630,000 for non-compliance. Texas has also been making strides in targeting large corporations for collecting personal data from 45 million Americans through embedded software.
With more states employing stricter tracking of data mining, it will be interesting to see what the rest of the states do, and possibly what will happen federally.
Takeaway: Protecting your Data is More Important than Ever
Privacy laws are constantly changing. As personal data becomes more and more available to these companies, regulations have to be put in place to protect the customers. In 2026, we might see even more states following suit.
At Lyv Marketing, we want to make sure you are informed on what is happening with your data and your presence on the internet. Remain informed on all things marketing and consumer experience by following us and reading our blog!
