The California Consumer Privacy Act or CCPA which was enacted in 2018 takes effect January 1, 2020.
Here’s what the new bill says:
The California Constitution grants a right of privacy. Existing law provides for the confidentiality of personal information in various contexts and requires a business or person that suffers a breach of security of computerized data that includes personal information, as defined, to disclose that breach, as specified.
This bill would enact the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. Beginning January 1, 2020, the bill would grant a consumer a right to request a business to disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information that it collects about the consumer, the categories of sources from which that information is collected, the business purposes for collecting or selling the information, and the categories of 3rd parties with which the information is shared.
The bill would require a business to make disclosures about the information and the purposes for which it is used. The bill would grant a consumer the right to request deletion of personal information and would require the business to delete upon receipt of a verified request, as specified.
The bill would grant a consumer a right to request that a business that sells the consumer’s personal information, or discloses it for a business purpose, disclose the categories of information that it collects and categories of information and the identity of 3rd parties to which the information was sold or disclosed.
The bill would require a business to provide this information in response to a verifiable consumer request. The bill would authorize a consumer to opt out of the sale of personal information by a business and would prohibit the business from discriminating against the consumer for exercising this right, including by charging the consumer who opts out a different price or providing the consumer a different quality of goods or services, except if the difference is reasonably related to value provided by the consumer’s data.
The bill would authorize businesses to offer financial incentives for collection of personal information. The bill would prohibit a business from selling the personal information of a consumer under 16 years of age, unless affirmatively authorized, as specified, to be referred to as the right to opt in.
The bill would prescribe requirements for receiving, processing, and satisfying these requests from consumers. The bill would prescribe various definitions for its purposes and would define “personal information” with reference to a broad list of characteristics and behaviors, personal and commercial, as well as inferences drawn from this information. The bill would prohibit the provisions described above from restricting the ability of the business to comply with federal, state, or local laws, among other things.
The bill would provide for its enforcement by the Attorney General, as specified, and would provide a private right of action in connection with certain unauthorized access and exfiltration, theft, or disclosure of a consumer’s nonencrypted or nonredacted personal information, as defined.
The bill would prescribe a method for distribution of proceeds of Attorney General actions. The bill would create the Consumer Privacy Fund in the General Fund with the moneys in the fund, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to be applied to support the purposes of the bill and its enforcement.
The bill scheduled to take effect January 1, 2020, is similar in nature to the GDPR which the EU put into effect this past year to protect the rights of citizens’ and impacts website worldwide that have EU visitors. Even if a business does not sell products or services in the EU they should be GDPR compliant.
In the California bill on the CCPA the impact is similar and protects California residents on website even if the website does not sell or provide services in California.
Sage recommends:
Considering that many US and even worldwide businesses ship products to California, or have online properties like websites that are available to Californians, a significant number of businesses will need to make timely preparations, and ensure ongoing compliant processes are in place.
Read the full article.
For most small businesses, they will not need to change their online marketing due to this new act, as it mainly effects businesses with over $25 million in revenue or those that are in business to sell site visitors’ personal information.
That being said, the minimum implementation that a website should use at this time is the GDPR which is the privacy protection for the EU. Most clients we work with do not fit into the category that will be impacted by the new CCPA law.
It is important to understand that privacy laws are changing and that consumers now require websites, that they visit, to be more transparent as to what the site does with their personal information and who they share it with.
To me, this seems like a great time to review your business policies about privacy and to update your own website’s posted privacy policy to meet these new consumer expectations and laws.
