Virginia's ban on selling precise geolocation data takes effect July 1

Virginia’s ban on selling consumers’ precise geolocation data took effect on July 1, 2026, about three months after Governor Abigail Spanberger signed it, making Virginia the third US state to prohibit the practice. The measure, SB338, resurfaced this week as the effective date arrived and drew fresh public attention.

The law amends the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act to bar data controllers from selling, or offering to sell, a consumer’s precise location. That matters because location feeds sold through data brokers have been used to track visits to clinics, places of worship and homes, a trade that broad federal privacy rules have never directly restrained.

SB338 defines precise geolocation data as information that identifies a person’s location within a 1,750-foot radius. It defines the prohibited “sale” narrowly, as an exchange of personal data for monetary consideration, the same wording Virginia used in its original privacy statute.

Virginia follows Maryland and Oregon in banning the sale of precise location data. Several other states, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Washington, are weighing similar bills, a state-by-state pattern that has advanced US location-data limits far faster than Congress.

The narrow definition of “sale” is the catch. Because it covers only exchanges for money, arrangements that trade location data for services or other value, rather than cash, may fall outside the ban, a gap privacy lawyers have flagged in earlier state laws using the same language. How Virginia’s attorney general reads that line will shape how much the ban actually curbs the location-data market.