Maryland

Overview: Nearly 70% of Maryland small businesses use digital advertising to grow their business.

The bill will stop small businesses from “knowing and communicating with their customers” because it limits collection to only data “necessary to provide or maintain a specific product or service,” which inadvertently prohibits legitimate data collection that is otherwise permitted by the bill.

This hurts small businesses in many ways: 

1. Prevents businesses from contacting existing customers about upcoming sales, new products, or other marketing updates. 
2. Prevents businesses from using customer location data to decide where to open new locations.
3. Prevents businesses and their marketing partners from collecting traffic data needed to measure and improve website performance.
4. Prevents businesses and their advertising partners from collecting consumer data necessary to measure and improve advertising effectiveness.

The bill also requires businesses with at least 35,000 customer interactions to produce  “data protection assessments” for each “data processing activity” on a “regular basis.” Data processing activities include spreadsheets, CRM software, and email software. Data protection assessments are a new concept requiring expensive lawyers and consultants. Compliance costs alone will crush small businesses.