When the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) passed at the end of 2018, business owners across the state moved to challenge the law, even as they worked to comply with the law’s strict conditions.
This landmark law went into effect as of January 1, 2020. However, state lawmakers recently issued minor – yet still important – changes to the law.
What could change in the CCPA?
As many business owners know, learning from experience is often an effective way to understand the ins and outs of how a business works. It allows business owners to adapt and customize their actions to the business’s needs as they change.
The same strategy often applies to laws. Now that the CCPA is in effect, lawmakers, business owners and consumers alike are seeing how it works. All of these proposed changes are a result of these observations and meant to adjust the written law to reality.
California’s attorney general has proposed several small changes to the law, including, but not limited to:
- Businesses must provide clearer opt-out options for consumers;
- Companies must provide notices of data collection before consumers download an app;
- An additional notice is also required before the actual data collection occurs;
- All notices must comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; and
- Companies only have to provide the general purpose of data collection.
Another one of the important changes business owners must know is that personal data is now defined as information that can be reasonably linked back to a specific individual, such as a name or email address.
Business owners must prepare for these changes
Several of these changes benefit businesses. They make the law’s requirements much clearer, which can help businesses minimize the risks of compliance violations.
However, if these changes go into effect, then business owners will once again be responsible for:
- Ensuring their business complies with all of the CCPA requirements; and
- Adjusting their policies and procedures to comply with these amendments.
This is critical since noncompliance could result in a fine of $2,500 or $7,500 for each violation of the law. Businesses must make sure they stay informed of these changes to the CCPA and understand how they affect their business to proactively protect their future ventures.
