Why all your favorite apps are serving you new privacy prompts

Users of Facebook, Google and other popular technology platforms are likely to benefit from stricter privacy regulations that will require new disclosures, new forms of consent and new power to limit how personal data is stored and utilized. The changes are being announced in emails, blog posts and new on-screen messages that many consumers are already beginning to see from Apple, Twitter, Airbnb, GoDaddy and others. Don’t bother thanking Washington. Rather the changes emanate from the European Union, which is imposing a host of new regulations that are forcing global changes, including for hundreds of millions tech consumers in the United States. Privacy advocates warn that these changes won’t fundamentally change the relationship between consumers and tech companies, many of which make their profits by collecting data on users, building individual profiles and selling advertising based on the resulting troves of data.