Remember when we were all worried about GDPR? That was so yesterday – not the compliance part, that you still need to pay attention to. 

This week California has finalized new privacy laws, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), that you will need to comply with. In most industries, with California’s outsized population and commerce, as they go, so goes the rest of the United States. Other states are already considering new regulations.

With the world preoccupied by the pandemic crisis, some publishers have taken their eye off the ball. Now is time to be certain you have taken steps to avoid triggering penalties from the most significant new privacy law.

• When will CCPA affect us? The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was enacted in June of 2018. It went into effect on January 1, 2020, and legal enforcement of the Act was set for July 1, 2020. Active enforcement begins now.
• What is CCPA? This Act creates new consumer rights relating to the access to, deletion of, and sharing of personal information that is collected by businesses. The goal is to prevent the sale of a Californian’s personal data to third parties.  (See https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa for more info) 
• What’s the bottom line? Visitors to your site must clearly be presented with information regarding the tracking cookies your site uses. They must also easily be able to accept or deny these cookies. You must be able to remove a consumer’s data from your records, yet somehow be able to track the fact you are actively doing that. 
• Is this bad for us? Well, you do need to be in compliance and avoid fines of $2,500 - $7,500 per violation. You also may have less data you can sell. 
• Is there anything good for my business? Yes! The more there are limits on the sale of 3rd-party data the more your advertisers need your website to deliver data-enhanced campaigns. Big Data’s loss can be your gain.

ePublishing clients have the advantage. We act as your publishing partner. Hundreds of publications, associations, event and business information companies rely on us to worry about what they need to be aware of. 

ePublishing developed an easy, powerful solution that super-powers our clients’ privacy protections. We added functionality that will remove the tracking cookies that ePublishing has control over for users who deny; it will continue to allow cookies to be created for users who have either taken no action or have accepted.

Want to find out how to take advantage of the new restrictions? Ask us how ePublishing and our Reader Intelligence platform can let you sell advertising products CCPA restricts others from offering.