About Privacy Law Network

Privacy Law Network is a free reference on United States privacy law. It describes what the statutes, regulations and court decisions actually say, state by state and law by law, and links each claim to the document it came from so a reader can check it. The site is published under its own name and is free to read, with no accounts, no paywall and no forms.

What the Site Covers

The core of the site is a page for each of the 50 states. Each one sets out that state’s privacy statutes, its data breach notification rules and the enforcement actions its attorney general has published, with the statute sections cited in the text and listed at the foot of the page.

Around those sit reference guides to the laws that apply across states: a side-by-side comparison of every state comprehensive privacy law, a guide to state breach notification requirements, and guides to the federal sectoral statutes, including HIPAA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, FERPA, COPPA, the TCPA, CAN-SPAM and the Video Privacy Protection Act. News coverage follows new statutes, rules, enforcement actions and court decisions as they happen, and six industry guides collect the rules that reach healthcare, financial services, retail, technology, education and employers.

How Pages Are Researched

Every factual claim on the site traces to a primary source: statute or bill text, a regulation, an agency release or guidance document, a court opinion or docket filing, or an official registry. Secondary coverage can point toward a development, but it is never the only source for a claim.

Every source a page cites is retrieved and read before the page is published. A citation found in a search result but not opened does not ship. When a source cannot be reached, the page says so and records nothing in its place, rather than filling the gap with a general description. A claim that cannot be sourced is removed, not softened.

Codified law is read from the legislature’s or agency’s current official text wherever it is published, because enrolled bills and older compilations can include language that was struck or later amended.

What the Pages Do, and Do Not, Say

Pages describe what a law requires and whom it applies to, in the terms the law itself uses. They do not tell a reader whether a law covers them, what they should do, or how a court would apply it to their facts. That boundary is deliberate: the content is not written or reviewed by an attorney, so it reports the law rather than advising on it. Anyone who needs to know where they stand under a particular law should consult a licensed attorney.

Dates and Corrections

Each state page shows, directly under its headline, the date it was last checked against the current law. News articles and guides show their publication date and, where materially revised, an updated date.

When a substantive error is found, it is corrected on the page and a dated correction note is added under the headline explaining what the page originally said and what the source shows. Published pages are not silently edited to fix substantive errors. The full policy is in the editorial standards.

Checks Built Into the Site

The site is generated from structured source files, and the build refuses to publish a page that fails its quality checks. Among them:

• Every article must cite at least one primary source, and each content type has a minimum number of sources and a minimum length.
• Every article is compared with every other article, and every state page with every other state page, for duplicated wording; a page too similar to another fails the build.
• Phrases that tell the reader what to do, such as “you should” or “we recommend”, fail the build outside quoted source material.
• Internal links are checked, and a link to a page that does not exist fails the build.

Independence

Privacy Law Network does not refer readers to attorneys and receives no referral compensation. It runs no advertising. Coverage decisions are not made by, sold to, or shown in advance to any attorney, firm or company. What the site collects from visitors is set out in the privacy policy.

Reporting an Error

Corrections are welcome. Write to info@privacylawnetwork.com with the page, the statement that is wrong, and the source that shows it. Please do not send confidential details of a legal matter; the site does not provide legal advice, and writing to it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Frequently Asked Questions