Data Privacy

When most people hear "data privacy," they picture hackers and data breaches. While criminals stealing your data is a scary thought, we don’t hear nearly as much about the powerful institutions in your life using your data to benefit themselves. The companies you willingly do business with every day collect, share, and sell your personal data, often without your knowledge. And in Michigan, there is no legal obligation to protect the data privacy of consumers like you.

Below are just some examples of how your data is used:

The Grocery Store Knows What You Bought Last Tuesday

When you swipe your loyalty card at a grocery store or tap your rewards app at a coffee shop, you're not just earning points. You're handing over a detailed record of your purchases, your location, your health interests, and your spending patterns.

Retailers are explicit about this internally, even if they aren't with you. Albertsons has described its loyalty program as "a rich data source for merchants and for our media collective, enabling targeted marketing and monetization." Kroger captures nearly every in-store and online transaction through its loyalty program and operates an entire data science subsidiary built on that information. Target reports that more than 75% of its transactions involve a loyalty member.

That data doesn't just stay with the store. It's packaged and sold to brands and advertisers who want to reach you, often without any clear disclosure at the point of sign-up. When you joined that rewards program, you likely agreed to this in a terms-of-service document that was dozens of pages long.

In Michigan, there is no law requiring companies to tell you exactly how your loyalty data is used or sold, or to keep opt-out services easy for consumers.

The Apps on Your Phone May Know Even More

Fertility and menstrual tracking apps are used by tens of millions of people, and often know more about people’s bodies than their doctors do. Consumer Reports examined five of the most popular reproductive health apps and found that not one of them guarantees your information won't be shared with third parties. Flo, one of the most widely used of these apps, was found to have shared personal data with Facebook for ad targeting. Apps like BabyCenter, Clue, My Calendar, and Ovia all share some user data with external partners.

Some apps promise never to "sell" your data. But many privacy policies include fine print allowing all data to be transferred if the app is sold to another company, including a drug company or a media firm.

The Reproductive Health Data Privacy Act, or House Bill 5769, was introduced in March of 2026 by Representative Mai Xiong to specifically address this gap in data privacy law, after recognizing that existing federal health privacy laws don't cover consumer apps. The bill would give Michigan residents the right to access and delete their reproductive health data and ban companies from sharing or selling it.

Your Insurance Rate May Be Based on Data You Never Agreed to Share

In most states, auto and homeowners’ insurance companies use a "credit-based insurance score" to set your premium. This score is an invisible formula built from your credit history that decides how much you pay, sometimes by hundreds or thousands of dollars per year.

This system is designed to harm those most vulnerable in our state. Drivers with poor credit scores pay an average of over $4,500 more per year for auto insurance than drivers with excellent credit, even with the same driving record. Consumer advocates and researchers have noted that credit scores correlate strongly with income and race, meaning this practice disproportionately burdens lower-income Michiganders and people of color.

Michigan is one of only a handful of states that bans the use of credit history in auto insurance pricing, a meaningful consumer protection in our state that lacks many others. But that ban doesn't extend to other types of insurance, so companies specializing in other areas of insurance continue to collect a wide range of personal data to price premiums in ways consumers rarely see or understand.

Data Brokers: Selling Your Information to Strangers

Behind all these examples is an industry whose entire business model is collecting personal information about you, combining it using dozens of sources, and selling it to whoever will pay.

Data brokers can know your name, address, income estimate, health conditions, purchasing history, browsing habits, political affiliation, and more, without any direct relationship with you. And in Michigan, they operate with no obligation to register, disclose their practices, or allow you to opt out.

Michigan's proposed Personal Data Privacy Act (SB 359) would require data brokers to register annually with the Attorney General, creating a public registry. It would also give consumers the right to request deletion of their data. The bill is still pending in the Legislature.

What Would Change If Michigan Acted

Michigan is one of the remaining states without a comprehensive consumer data privacy law. If SB 359 passed, Michigan residents would gain:

• The right to know what personal data companies are collecting about them

• The right to correct or delete their data

• The right to opt out of their data being sold to third parties

• Mandatory consent before companies process sensitive personal data

• A public registry of data brokers operating in Michigan

• Fines for companies that break these regulations

Both SB 359 and a set of companion bills strengthening identity theft laws (SB 360-364) must pass before the end of the 2026 legislative session, if we want to make sure consumers can be properly protected from data privacy issues.

What You Can Do Now

Contact your Michigan legislators. Ask them to support SB 359-364. Find your legislators and tell them to support the bills by clicking here.

Review the apps on your phone. Check your privacy settings in any health, fitness, or wellness apps. Opt out of data sharing and ad tracking where possible. Delete data when you stop using an app.

Read loyalty program terms. Before signing up, look for language about whether the company sells or shares your purchase data with third parties.

Spread the word. Most Michigan consumers don't know their data has no comprehensive legal protection in this state. Sharing this article is a simple way to change that.