Rhode Island Data Transparency and Privacy Protection Act, publicly available information exemption

R.I. Gen. Laws § 6-48.1-2(24)

A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.

In force 8 months, effective 1 January 2026.

A personal data rule binding private bodies.

As of 6 September 2026.

What it requires

Personal data that is lawfully made available through a government record, or that you have a reasonable basis to believe a Rhode Island customer has lawfully made available to the public through widely distributed media, falls outside RIDTPPA's definition of personal data.
Do not treat personal data scraped from an aggregator, people-search site, or re-hosted directory as publicly available under RIDTPPA; the exemption has no prong for a third party's unrestricted disclosure of someone else's data.

What this law does

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

RIDTPPA's definition of "personal data" at section 6-48.1-2(18) excludes "publicly available information," defined at (24) as information that is lawfully made available through federal, state, or municipal government records or widely distributed media, or that a controller has a reasonable basis to believe a customer has lawfully made available to the general public.

Unlike California's four-prong CCPA exemption, Rhode Island's exemption has no separate prong reaching information a third party (rather than the data subject) disclosed without restricting the audience, so personal data a scraper pulls from a re-hosted directory or an aggregator that is neither a government record nor the data subject's own act falls outside the exemption and inside RIDTPPA's reach for a controller the Act otherwise covers.

RIDTPPA applies only to for-profit entities that conduct business in, or target products or services to, Rhode Island residents and meet its 35,000-customer or 10,000-customer-plus-20-percent-revenue thresholds; its enforcement and further customer-rights detail are researched in this jurisdiction's privacy topic document.

When LexLint raises it

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Read the law

official text, Rhode Island General Laws (webserver.rilegislature.gov)

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