On June 18, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed off on the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 with an effective date of January 1, 2020. The “Act” provides four fundamental rights in relation to consumer personal information:
The right to know, therefore giving them a complete awareness of personal information collected by businesses. Companies must provide where it was sourced, what it is being used for, whether it is being disclosed or sold to a third party, and to whom it is being sold and disclosed.
This Act will apply to for-profit companies that collect and control California residents’ personal information. For example, companies who exceed annual gross revenues of $25 million, receive and disclose 50,000 or more residents’ personal information, and obtain 50 percent or more of their annual incomes by selling California residents’ personal information.
California’s large population and economic presence pose a conflict for all companies even though they are not physically present in the state. For instance, very few companies are likely to offer the Act opt-out option to a user visiting their website from an IP address in California, while also providing a site without those features for non-California residents. The California Privacy Act poses an issue for companies operating online which are about 100% of companies in this digital age.