University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

U.S. Data Privacy Law: Foundations for Professionals

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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

U.S. Data Privacy Law: Foundations for Professionals

Ken Suh

Instructor: Ken Suh

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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Beginner level

Recommended experience

1 week to complete
at 10 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Beginner level

Recommended experience

1 week to complete
at 10 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

  • Explain how U.S. law defines and protects privacy, including name and likeness, personal data, and personally identifiable information.

  • Analyze how federal privacy laws such as the VPPA, COPPA, and ECPA apply to children’s data, cookies, and online tracking.

  • Apply a step-by-step method for reading the CCPA, including its scope, key definitions, and consumer rights, to build a privacy policy.

Details to know

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Recently updated!

November 2026

Assessments

18 assignments

Taught in English

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This course is part of the Data Privacy and AI Law: Compliance for Non-Lawyers Specialization
When you enroll in this course, you'll also be enrolled in this Specialization.
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  • Gain a foundational understanding of a subject or tool
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There are 2 modules in this course

You will learn how the course is organized and what privacy means in law, including the four categories of privacy practices, the concepts of autonomy and zones of privacy, and why the law protects privacy only in situations where competing interests are balanced. You will also learn how to read and brief a court case, and how name and likeness and the right of publicity work in practice, including the limits on those claims for news, art, parody, and biography. You will then be introduced to data privacy, including personal data, the sources of privacy law in the United States and how its federal and state patchwork compares with the GDPR, and three approaches to defining personally identifiable information.

What's included

8 videos1 reading7 assignments

You will learn how the United States regulates privacy through a sectoral approach, starting with the Video Privacy Protection Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and how courts and regulators apply these older laws to cookies, online tracking, and smart TVs. You will also learn concepts that recur across privacy laws, including consent, the ordinary course of business, preemption, private rights of action, and statutory damages. Finally, you will learn a step-by-step method for reading a privacy regulation using the California Consumer Privacy Act, including who it applies to, how it defines personal and sensitive personal information, what rights it gives consumers, and how that analysis feeds into a privacy policy.

What's included

11 videos1 reading11 assignments

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Instructor

Ken Suh
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2 Courses3 learners

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