Georgia fares poorly in report for laws for online privacy

Georgia ranks among the worst states for its laws governing online privacy.

The Peach State scored 3.5 out of 25 points in a new analysis from Comparitech, a website focused on cyber security and online privacy. The site analyzed laws governing online privacy to determine how states ranked based on 22 key criteria.

"Georgia features toward the bottom of our rankings for privacy by state due to its lack of a comprehensive data privacy law and failure to cover a number of other key areas," Rebecca Moody, head of data research at Comparitech, told The Center Square.

"Scoring 3.5 out of 25, Georgia manages to score a point for having a data disposal for companies (this doesn’t cover government entities, though), a law to protect K-12 student information, and a shield law to protect journalists," Moody said. "The half point stems from the inclusion of genetic data privacy within its insurance code."

While Georgia ranked ahead of neighboring North Carolina (3), it was behind Alabama (5), Florida (5), South Carolina (5.5) and Tennessee (5.5).

Comparitech rated California as the best state for online privacy, ahead of Utah and Virginia. It rated Idaho as the worst state for online privacy, just ahead of Pennsylvania and Mississippi.

"Georgia’s score would improve dramatically if it were to introduce a comprehensive data privacy law — like the Georgia Computer Data Privacy Act that was introduced at the Senate early last year but died in committee," Moody added. "Having such a law would help provide comprehensive data protection to all types of consumers/users and ensure basic privacy protections are offered for personal data collected by companies."