Following previous modifications in October 2019, and in February and March 2020, the latest updates landed in December, delivered by the California Department of Justice.
CCPA regulations. The fourth set of proposed modifications
Each set of the previous modifications results from taking account of, and action on, the comments made to each of the developments in the earlier sets.
This latest, fourth set of modifications is primarily concerned with:
- Ambiguities regarding a consumer’s right to opt-out
- The use of a company opt-out button
- Processing opt-out requests
1. The right to opt-out
The proposed modifications concerning the right to opt-out are concerned with businesses selling personal information gathered in offline situations.
The new regulation dictates that companies should provide an opt-out of selling personal data in that same situation.
- A business that sells collects personal information that it collects in the course of interacting with consumers offline shall also provide notice inform consumers by an offline method of their right to opt-out and provide instructions on how to submit a request to opt-out by an offline method that facilitates consumers’ awareness of their right to opt-out. Illustrative examples follow.
- A business that sells personal information that it collects from consumers in a brick-and-mortar store may inform consumers of their right to opt-out on the paper forms that collect the personal information or by posting signage in the area where the personal information is collected directing consumers to where the opt-out information can be found online.
- A business that sells personal information that it collects over the phone may inform consumers of their right to opt-out orally during the call when the information is collected.
It delivers strong examples here—if the data is gathered during a phone call, the call must include dialogue that makes the subject aware that their data may be sold and an opportunity to opt-out from its selling. In this situation, the opt-out is verbal, as is the rest of the conversation and its arrangements and agreements.
The same must be provided then, in written arrangements, verbal methods in other situations (face-to-face, in-store, or video calling, for example), and during any other offline method.
2. The re-introduction of a company opt-out button
The use of an opt-out button looks to have been standardized by introducing a uniform logo that all companies should use when implementing the option. There are supporting instructions relevant to its use—once again, to keep the system standardized across the market.
An opt-out button was included in the first set of the CCPA regulation modifications, yet was removed due to negative feedback.
CCPA regulations. Opt-out button regulation updates
The following paragraphs were added to create a new section of the regulations, the first covers a smaller simple blue coloured tick/cross image, and the second the same image with the Do Not Sell My Personal Information wording to its right-hand side:
- May be used in addition to posting the notice of right to opt-out, but not in lieu of any requirement to post the notice of right to opt-out or a ‘Do Not Sell My Personal Information’ link as required by; and
- Where a business posts the ‘Do Not Sell My Personal Information’ link, the opt-out button shall be added to the left of the text demonstrated below. The opt-out button shall link to the same Internet webpage or online location to which the consumer is directed after clicking on the ‘Do Not Sell My Personal Information’ link.
- The button shall be approximately the same size as any other buttons used by the business on its webpage.
3. Processing consumers requests to opt-out
The final modification includes instruction into streamlining the opt-out process as much as possible.
- “Requests to opt-out shall be easy for consumers to execute and shall require minimal steps to allow the consumer to opt-out.”
This subsection details that the method to opt-out should be just as simple as opting in, with no additional steps included in the process. Both options should contain the same number of steps in their process.
Comments to modifications closed on December 28th 2020.
For the full set of changes and modifications can be viewed here.
Data protection is at the heart of what our PrivacyRun system has been designed to manage. But what is it, exactly? And how do the laws, legislation, bills, and breaches of the Data Protection Act and GDPR affect your business?
Well, hopefully, we’re about to answer all of your questions. For further, more specific issues that our introductory guide doesn’t cover, we’d love to hear from you. Our team are experts in the field and will happily guide you through all aspects you don’t quite understand and show you how our PrivacyRun package manages them for you.
What is data protection?
Data protection is designed to ensure that anyone sharing information with a business or organization is protected and that their data will be used and held responsibly and legally.
What is data protection law?
Data protection law is the combination of legislation and regulatory acts and bodies that govern how your information is collected and utilized. The Data Protection Act is one part of the legislation. The other key area is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the most comprehensive data protection legislation worldwide.
What is the purpose of the Data Protection Act?
The DPA protects us from our personal information getting into the wrong hands. We share so many sensitive details with different vendors and providers that we want to stay private. The act’s job is to make sure they stay that way.
What is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)?
The Data Protection Act (DPA) is a UK Act of Parliament, passed in 1988, to develop the control of our information.
The DPA is monitored and regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO offers advice and guidance, promotes good practice, manages audits, reports, complaints, and breaches, also delivering enforcement and action where required.
What are the principles of the Data Protection Act?
GDPR, the ICO and the Data Protection Act sets out a range of key principles for lawful personal data processing. So, what are the 7 data protection principles?
- Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
- Purpose limitation
- Data minimization
- Accuracy
- Storage limitation
- Integrity and confidentiality (security)
- Accountability
These principles dictate how businesses and organizations collect, organize, structure and store our information. They also detail their proper communication, removal and destruction. They also cover what happens when anyone breaks those rules.
What data is covered by the Data Protection Act?
The DPA covers the processing of all personal data relating to a living individual (also known as the data subject) that can be used on its own or with other information, to identify them.
It covers data held electronically or as a hard copy, and wherever it’s stored.
What type of information does the Data Protection Act apply to?
Personal data includes the more typical types of private information, for example, a subject’s name, address, medical, and banking details.
Sensitive data digs a little deeper, including such information as race and religion, political opinions, criminal activity, your sex life, and more.
What is a breach of the Data Protection Act?
According to the ICO:
“A personal data breach is a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to, personal data.”
This definition covers a vast range of possible incidents—from accidental delivery of personal data to incorrect recipients and unauthorized access by a third party to loss of hardware containing personal data, and the loss of availability of any data.
There are also different guidelines and regulations for different types of service providers. You can find more information about each area and how to react to a data breach in each of them on the ICO website.
What happens if a company breaches the Data Protection Act?
If you suffer any kind of breach, then you have to decide whether you need to report the problem. Not all breaches need reporting, so the ICO provides a self-assessment form to help data controllers determine whether they need to register each incident or not.
For all incidents that need reporting, they must be presented to the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours of the event discovery.
If the event is likely to present adverse effects on its data subjects’ rights, the business must inform those individuals without undue delay.
Of course, each organization must ensure that they have appropriate systems to limit any breach risk. Such a system should include breach detection, investigation, and internal reporting procedures.
What are the consequences of breaching the Data Protection Act?
The ICO has the power to prosecute all offences. They deliver a range of fines and even prison sentences for deliberate breaches. For issues that can be rectified within the law, enforcement notices are provided and should be carried out accordingly.
The prosecutors consider various criteria before delivering each fine. They include the nature, gravity, duration, and character of the infringement. They also examine the type of personal data affected and any previous violations. Finally, the punishment can also reflect how cooperative the business has been throughout the process.
Claims for damages
The data subjects can also claim compensation for damages due to a breach. So, as well as being fined by administrators, data controllers and processors are vulnerable to being sued by individuals. Those data breach costs just keep on growing!
What is the fine for breach of data protection?
The ICO can issue fines of up to £500,000, yet it’s GDPR that delivers the biggest fines.
For the most serious GDPR violations, fines can reach a maximum of €20 million or 4% of the organization’s total annual worldwide turnover.
For less serious breaches, the maximum fine drops to €10 million or 2% of the organization’s worldwide turnover. That’s still quite a fine to face, however big your business operations are.
As you can see, the fines are considerable—and so they should be. Our data and its protection need managing with the highest respect and security. Such substantial fines should hopefully reflect the serious nature of any inaction, the consequences of what happens if you breach the Data Protection Act, and the importance of implementing the right system to avoid them.
What does a data protection officer do?
Each business or organization must appoint a data protection officer to manage their data protection processes. That includes the personal data of its staff, customers, providers, and any other individual in compliance with the various data protection regulations.
A data protection officer will be hired based on their expert knowledge of the subject, as well as their personal and professional qualities. Understanding how their specific business/organization operates and handles the different data types within their system is also a key factor.
A data protection officer ensures that controllers and subjects are informed of their rights, obligations and responsibilities. They deliver advice and recommendations to the business about the interpretation and application of the rules and register operations with the correct institutions.
What is a data protection risk assessment?
Data managers, controllers, and officers need to understand precisely where their business or organization could be falling short of the Data Protection Act or GDPR. A risk assessment can highlight areas where your system doesn’t incorporate the appropriate protection levels for your data subjects.
Risk assessment is another key area covered by the ICO. They provide data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) to help businesses systematically analyze, identify and manage the data protection risks of any project or plan. The key word here is ‘help’. They don’t guarantee to eradicate all risk, but they help minimize risk to an acceptable level.
There are data processing areas that automatically demand impact assessment, and areas that the ICO considers likely to result in high risk. For further information, check out the relevant pages on the ICO website.
What does high risk mean?
In this context, risk debates the potential for significant physical, material or non-material harm to individuals. An assessment evaluates the likelihood and severity of any potential harm to individuals.
Risk implies more than a remote chance of some harm.
High risk implies a far higher threshold. It could result from more severe damage, or greater chances of being put at risk—or both.
DPIAs are both flexible and scalable, so suit all sectors and projects. The importance of running regular risk assessments, or an IPO impact assessment, should be obvious. Just consider the fines you could be subject to, and then the added repercussions of failing to provide adequate data security and management systems. You’d be remiss not to have every angle covered.
Summing up…
We hope the above FAQs deliver an enlightening introduction to what personal data is, the Data Protection Act, and what happens if you break the Data Protection Act law.
Having a system in place that manages every angle according to the requirements of the ICO and GDPR is vital in today’s business. Fortunately, we’re here to help you every step of the way, so why not drop us a line to find out how we can provide you with the ultimate protection today?