Privacy Predictions for the Upcoming Year: What Agency Owners Need to Know

At Termageddon, we’re kind of psychic. We have a fifth sense. It’s like we have ESPN or something. We can always tell when privacy laws are going to change.

Well… we can tell when they’re already changing. (P.S. Yes, I know it’s not ESPN, but we’re fully committed to the ongoing Mean Girls bit.)

But hey, it’s that time of year! So we’re putting our privacy-nerd powers (and our Mean Girls knowledge) to work to figure out what privacy might look like in 2027.

If you run a web agency or build websites for clients, these are our six privacy predictions for the year ahead. The goal? Help you stay one step ahead, prepare your clients for what’s coming, and avoid getting flattened by a regulatory bus.

Fair warning: forecasting privacy is a lot like forecasting weather. Things shift with the wind, nobody gives you credit when you’re right, and everyone blames you when you’re wrong.

One last thing: These predictions are based on our best read of the privacy landscape and are intended to help web agencies prepare for the year ahead. They’re not legal advice, and we are not actually psychics.

1. Stop Trying to Make a Federal (U.S.) Privacy Law Happen. It’s Not Going to Happen.

Forecast: 0% chance of clear, federal direction

Every few months, an ambitious federal privacy bill gets drafted in Washington, and agency owners ask: “Is this finally the one that gives us a single, unified set of rules across the US?” or “Is this our GDPR?!”

Short answer: No.

Long answer: It is extremely unlikely that a comprehensive US federal privacy law will pass in the upcoming year. There are currently no proposed federal bills that stand a realistic chance of gaining bipartisan support, and comprehensive consumer privacy simply isn’t at the top of Congress’s legislative to-do list.

Plus, numerous U.S. states got sick of waiting around and have passed their own privacy laws, making it harder and harder to figure out how an overarching U.S. law would mesh with these existing state laws.

What does this mean for agencies?

Don’t let clients tell you that “they’ll worry about privacy when the federal government passes a single law.” Laws from various states and even countries can target U.S. businesses (even small ones). Waiting isn’t a good idea when there are dozens of existing laws capable of handing out fines and lawsuits like they’re candy canes.

2. The State Patchwork: The Limit Does Not Exist

Forecast: 85% chance of scattered privacy laws

Because of prediction #1, states will keep stepping in. Expect more states to propose and pass their own privacy laws to protect their residents. While you might think a limit exists given that there are only 50 states, remember that states are regularly changing their existing laws to meet new threats (like AI).

What does this mean for agencies?

Privacy laws are always changing, and agencies are plenty busy as it is without having to read up on every privacy bill that gets released, removed, rewritten, and then released again.

Just one look at our State Privacy Bill Tracker shows why we’re pretty confident you’ll need an umbrella for 2027. By umbrella, I mean a solution that auto-updates your and your clients’ website policies and consent solution as these bills turn into laws and go into effect. By that, I mean Termageddon.

3. AI and Automated Decision-Making: Put Them in the Burn Book

Forecast: 90% chance of H(AI)L

Speaking of AI and death…

Regulators have caught on to the fact that every SaaS platform, plugin, and digital workflow is suddenly “powered by AI” – and they aren’t amused by the lack of guardrails.

States and countries will continue amending existing privacy laws (and passing new ones) to rein in privacy-harming automated technologies. The focus is zeroing in on Automated Decision-Making Technology (ADMT) and generative AI models.

These updates may:

• Give individuals explicit rights to opt out of automated profiling, especially when those decisions affect things like credit, employment, or housing.
• Require businesses to perform formal risk assessments (or Data Protection Impact Assessments) before deploying technologies that process personal data to make automated evaluations.

What this means for agencies:

Before you go all “I’m not a regular agency, I’m a cool agency,” and hook up a flashy AI Chatbot to your client’s CRM, find out what happens to that data. Is it used to train the AI? Can users opt out? Is it even going to be used by the client? Is there a proper disclosure on the chatbot itself saying that people are interacting with an AI and not a real human? These are important questions to ask to avoid landing your client in hot water.

4. Enforcement Gets Real

Forecast: Partly cloudy in 2026, with overcast skies expected in 2027

When new privacy laws go into effect, regulators often offer a “grace period.” This gives businesses time to figure out the rules and get settled.

Those grace periods are expiring, and regulatory enforcement is about to ramp up significantly. Regulators aren’t just glancing at footers to see if a link says “Privacy Policy.” They’re getting all the details:

• Cookie banner consent: Does your banner actually prevent non-essential tracking scripts from firing before the visitor clicks “Accept”? If your Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, or video embeds are firing before consent, your banner is nothing more than an annoying pop-up.
• Accuracy of disclosures: Does the Privacy Policy match reality? If the policy claims the business doesn’t share third-party data, but then it says it uses data-sharing, tools like MailChimp, Google Analytics, and Hubspot… that’s a sign of an inaccurate Privacy Policy.
• Consumer privacy rights: Can users actually submit requests to access, correct, or delete their data, and is there an established internal workflow to respond in a reasonable time?

What this means for agencies:

This is your cue to perform a website privacy review for your client. Auditing tracking scripts, ensuring consent management tools actually block cookies, and testing consumer request forms isn’t just risk reduction, it’s also a value-add opportunity.

5. Vendor Due Diligence: You Can’t Sit With Us!

Forecast: Vendor watch

You can’t just say, “Get in, loser, we’re going to collect customer data,” and dump form submissions into whatever third-party SaaS tool has the hottest UI.

Multiple modern privacy laws emphasize the importance of vendor due diligence for data processors. Businesses are held accountable not just for how they handle data, but for how their vendors, plugins, and third-party integrations treat that data downstream.

Regulators increasingly expect businesses to verify that their vendors:

• Have valid Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) in place.
• Won’t sell, share, or repurpose customer data for unauthorized machine learning or ad networks.
• Maintain adequate security standards.

What this means for agencies:

Send your client a list of all the third-party tools that their website uses (they may not know each of them). Then suggest your client build a vendor checklist and run every new plugin, analytics tool, and widget through it.

You can also share this recent podcast on how to perform vendor due diligence the right way.

6. Data Brokers: They Don’t Even Go Here

Forecast: Cloudy early with sunny skies later

Data brokers hold detailed information about people who never had a relationship with them. In other words, they never even went there.

Multiple new privacy laws now impose specific requirements on data brokers, including registration and the ability for individuals to opt out of having their personal information sold. As more people push back on the constant selling of their data, expect those laws to be enforced more aggressively in 2027.

What it means for you: Most agencies aren’t data brokers, but your clients’ tools may feed into the wild frenzy that is ad networks, audience lists, and lead-sharing arrangements. When brokers get squeezed, the pressure moves down the chain. Know which of your clients’ tools share data onward.

The Long-Term Forecast for Agencies

Forecast: Grab the umbrella

Trying to predict every twist and turn of privacy law will always feel a bit like predicting the weather. But one thing is crystal clear: website privacy isn’t a one-and-done checkbox you tick at launch and forget about. It’s an ongoing process of testing, documenting, and revisiting websites to make sure they’re built to weather the next storm.

While these predictions are just our educated forecast based on years in the regulatory trenches, you don’t need Karen Smith’s fifth sense to see what’s happening. All you have to do is look out the window, see the demand letters and enforcement actions raining down, and tell your clients one thing: grab the umbrella.