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Heidi Salow

Heidi counsels clients on a wide range of privacy, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence laws, regulations, and standards, including the CCPA, FERPA, EU AI Act, EU and U.K. GDPR, HIPAA, FCRA, GLBA, and NIST frameworks, as well as various U.S. state laws and regulations touching on healthcare and financial privacy, artificial intelligence, biometrics, and information security. She draws on a notable background as one of the first U.S. attorneys focused on data privacy and cybersecurity, as well as experience as a corporate executive. Heidi previously held executive roles at two large multinational corporations, Thomson Reuters and Leidos.

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Customer loyalty program concept in e-commerce for customer engagement. Man holding phone displaying earning points after purchasing online.

Key point: Whether your business runs a retail loyalty program, a restaurant rewards app, a software referral campaign, or an online sweepstakes, these programs often collect customer information, and that can trigger real privacy compliance obligations that are easy to overlook.

The Rules Vary by Program. Privacy Obligations Do Not.

Online promotional activities frequently involve the collection, use, and sharing of consumer personal information, and data privacy laws play an important role across all of them. Examples:

  • A retailer runs a points-based loyalty program which collects purchase history and behavioral data.
  • A company with a household brand name runs a sweepstakes and collects contact information for prize fulfillment.
  • A manufacturer offers mail-in rebates and collects names, addresses, and receipts to provide the rebates.
  • A mobile app runs a referral campaign and collects device identifiers and app usage data.
  • A sports betting app runs an advertising campaign to attract participants and inadvertently collects personal information from middle school kids who like sports.

All these instances trigger compliance obligations—even if the activities feel informal or low-risk.

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With three new state privacy laws that took effect on January 1, 2026 (Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island), adding to an extensive list of others, many organizations are discovering that their website privacy practices haven’t kept pace. Even those that updated their websites recently are finding hidden gaps, often due to unnoticed changes in technological tools and files, such as first and third-party cookies, third-party analytics software, and/or third-party scripts, tags, and pixels. A website audit can prevent enforcement issues and potential litigation or arbitration demands.

In October 2023, California passed the Delete Act, which, in addition to requiring data brokers to register with the state, directed Cal Privacy (f/k/a the California Privacy Protection Agency or CPPA) to create a data deletion software tool by January 1, 2026. This deletion software tool, now called the Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform (DROP), allows California residents to submit a single request to require all registered data brokers to 1) delete their personal information, and 2) stop selling or sharing that information through one verified, government‑administered process, rather than contacting hundreds of companies individually.

Litigation targeting website tracking technologies—such as cookies, pixels, session replay, and analytics tools—remains a major risk for businesses in 2025 and beyond. Courts continue to shape the boundaries of liability, consent, and compliance, with California and federal courts issuing several pivotal decisions this year. The legal landscape is evolving, with new theories, defenses, and legislative proposals emerging.…

Key point: Recent legislative efforts in Massachusetts, seeking to add another comprehensive data privacy law to the national patchwork of state laws, and in California enacting a law to regulate AI development, occurred this week when the Massachusetts Senate unanimously sent Senate Bill 2608 to the state House, and California enacted the nation’s second substantive state law regulating AI.