What is the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018?
The California Consumer Protection Act of 2018 (CCPA), is a data privacy regulation that is clearly modeled after GDPR. The CCPA goes into effect on 1/1/2020 with some exceptions, the most important of which is the business-to-business exception. The CCPA aims to provide California residents (“Consumers“)with greater control and insight into their data and how it’s used by organizations that collect and process it. While the punishment for breaching the CCPA is not as aggressive as GDPR and some of the requirements are less strict, a breach of the CCPA could still be ruinous for any organization that fails to uphold it.
What Does the California Consumer Privacy Act Do?
The CCPA provides Consumers with limited control over their data and a set of rights that are similar to those provided under GDPR. Consumers can request a company tell them all the information that’s been collected by an entity (Right to be Informed), they can request their data be deleted (Right to Deletion), they can object to processing (Right to Object), they can get a copy of any personal data processed by an entity (Right to Data Portability), they cannot be discriminated against for exercising their rights under the CCPA, and they have the right to not consent to data collection at any time (Right to Opt-Out). These rights can be exercised through email, phone call, or online. Additionally, a California cookie policy has to be put in place so that you can inform any California visitors of what data you’re collecting and why. The CCPA requires at least two ways of contacting an entity about privacy inquiries and rights requests, one of which must be a toll-free phone number. Considering the limited window to respond to a request, a toll-free phone number and email address are probably the way to go.
What is the CCPA Regulation?
The CCPA is a state-level data privacy regulation, which was passed in 2018 and goes into enforcement on 1/1/2020. State privacy regulations are promulgating across the United States as data privacy continues to be a major issue. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the only major piece of Federal data privacy regulation, and HIPAA only applies to certain types of entities that collect health information and not health information in general. While the CCPA is a state-level regulation, it does include an extraterritoriality provision, so entities based outside of California will still have to comply if they handle data coming from California residents.
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What are the Major Provisions of the Consumer Credit Protection Act?
The major provisions of the CCPA are the data subject rights, and the requirement to adequately protect Consumer data. The CCPA offers up suggestions of appropriate standards that entities should adhere to, without forcing data processing entities to conform to anyone in particular. It generally requires the use of “adequate and appropriate” security measures to ensure that any data is protected. Rights requests have to be handled within 30 days, so time is of the essence as well. While the penalties under the CCPA are not individually ruinous, they apply for each record involved in a breach, so costs can multiply quickly despite the potentially low cost per record.
