What is CCPA?
The California Consumer Privacy Act is a consumer privacy legislation which passed into California law on June 28th of 2018. The bill, also known as “AB 375,” has been described by some as “GDPR of the US.” This act is one of the strongest privacy legislation enacted in any state now, giving more power to consumers in regard to their private data.
It’s just a matter of time before other states will follow suit in the coming years, companies across the U.S. that take proactive steps today to better protect consumer data will be best equipped to ride the waves of change.
Is your business impacted by CCPA?
These are the three key articles in the law which explains if a business is impacted by CCPA:
- For-profit entities which do business in California and collect personal information of consumers.
- Has annual gross revenues in excess of twenty-five million dollars ($25,000,000)
- Derives 50 percent or more of its annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.
What is the scope of ‘Personal Information’?
An important term loosely defined in the bill is “personal information.” According the AB 375, “The bill…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.”
Dozens and perhaps hundreds of specific data items are mentioned in the legislation, including:
- Biometric data
- Household purchase data
- Family information (e.g., how many children)
- Geolocation
- Financial information
- Sleep habits
Conclusion
CCPA is the first of probably many steps that companies have to be prepared for with respect to consumer data privacy. It is well worth investing in building processes and automation around finding and categorizing customer data.
Having half-baked solutions or manual solutions will create a lot of churn and manual labor at best and at worst will cause omissions and errors which could cost the company millions of dollars in fines.
It is advisable to work with solution providers who have solved this problem before and have a frameworks and solutions that can be easily reproduced.
