Protecting Maryland Consumers in a Digital Age
I will continue protecting Maryland consumers from hidden costs, deceptive practices, and misuse of their personal information.
Marylanders should know what they are paying for and what companies are doing with their personal information. They should not have to worry about hidden fees, confusing contracts, or companies collecting and using more information about them than they realize. In the Senate, I have made consumer protection a major focus of my work, especially as new technology creates new risks for Maryland families.
I sponsored and passed the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, giving Marylanders more control over their personal information and limiting how much data companies can collect in the first place. The law also provides stronger protections for sensitive information, including health information, precise location data, and facial and fingerprint data.
Those protections are especially important when it comes to children. Companies should not be able to track children, collect unnecessary information about them, or use what they know about them to target what they see online. As technology and social media change, our laws need to keep up and put the safety and privacy of children ahead of corporate profits.
Protecting consumers also means taking on business practices that can quietly cost families money. I sponsored legislation to protect people buying concert and event tickets online by cracking down on the sale of tickets the seller does not actually have and requiring the full price to be disclosed upfront. I have also pushed for stronger protections on automatic-renewal subscriptions, including clear terms and a simple principle: it should be as easy to cancel as it was to sign up.
The growing use of technology in the marketplace creates new concerns as well, including how retailers set the prices we pay. I backed first-in-the-nation protections to prevent large retailers from constantly changing prices and from using information they collect about you to decide what price you see.
Artificial intelligence raises many of these same concerns on an even larger scale. AI brings enormous potential, but it also creates new ways to scam and deceive people. My work on AI has focused on protecting Marylanders from fraud, discrimination, misuse of personal information, and AI-generated images, voices, and videos that impersonate real people.
Whether you’re buying concert tickets, signing up for a subscription, shopping for your family, or letting your child use an app, you should be able to trust that you’re being treated fairly and that your personal information is protected. As technology changes, I’ll keep working to make sure Maryland’s consumer protections keep up.
