What is California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)?

With growing trend in consumer privacy concerns and exponential growth in data breaches, the state of California has created the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018, and fully in effect on January 1, 2020. CCPA gives consumers more control over how businesses collect and use their personal information, and gives them the right to know, opt-out, delete, and non-discriminated for exercising their privacy rights.

What is CCPA?

Unlike EU's GDPR which mandates organizations doing business with EU citizens to protect and secure personal data and enforce them with hefty fines for nonconformances, the CCPA is more about offering privacy rights to the consumers in addition to mandating businesses to comply with data protection standards. The Act offers California residents the following rights:

• The right to know what personal information is collected, and how it is used.
• The right to know whether their personal data is sold, and if so to whom?
• The right to opt-out of sale of their personal data.
• The right to ask businesses to delete their personal data.
• The right to access their personal data.
• The right to non-discriminate against exercising their privacy rights.

The CCPA is only applicable to California residents who live in California even if they are out-of-town temporarily. Also, the CCPA is only applicable to for-profit businesses with over $25 milling in gross revenue who engage in receiving, buying, and selling over 50K records or earns more than 50% of revenue from selling consumer data. It does not apply to non-profit organizations and small businesses with less than $25M in revenue.

Penalties for non-compliance are usually dismissed with a warning if a company fixes the non-conformance within 30-days of notice. However, if the problem cannot be resolved within the allotted timeframe, there will be a $2,500 fee per violation if unintended, and $7,500 per violation if deemed intentional.

What is considered personal data under CCPA?

Personal data is information that can be used to identify a person. For example, the personal data include but not limited to person's name, email, birthdate (age), IP address, geolocation, Internet browsing history, and biometric data. More sensitive information such as the SSN, credit card numbers, driver's license number, and passport number are all part of the personal information we care about. The information publicly available through federal, state, and local governments such as real estate records and professional licensing information are excluded.