What You Should Know About the California Consumer Privacy Act

By Joan Honig, DocuWare – Who’s following you around on the Internet? It might be a company like Amazon reminding you about a product you’ve been looking at on their website. Or it could be an ad from a financial firm that is targeted to people in your income bracket. Even charities and nonprofits get into the mix with requests for donations geared to our ages and interests. Our Internet searches and the information we share on social media have become fair game for organizations who want to use or sell personal data to make a profit.

However, the rules are starting to change. GDPR had a major impact on the privacy of Europe’s personal data and affected US companies who do business there. We began blogging and distributing educational material about GDPR even before the regulation went into effect. Now our attention is also on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). CCPA, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, and is an extremely significant US legislative privacy initiative. It has the potential for worldwide reach given the fact that California has the fifth largest global economy.