Taking Consumer Privacy Seriously in California and Beyond

In a time when the majority of consumers (85%) say cybersecurity and privacy risks are among the biggest risks facing society, it’s critical that companies understand and respond appropriately.

What’s perhaps even more important: Brands that take consumer privacy seriously tend to have better customer satisfaction. Consider this recent Capgemini study that reveals strong security increases overall customer satisfaction from 13% to 40%, and customers have shown they are willing to spend more with companies they trust to protect their privacy and data.

Consumer privacy hit U.S. headlines with the enactment of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Effective January 1, 2020, the CCPA creates new consumer rights relating to the access to, deletion of, and sharing of personal information that is collected by businesses. It gives nearly 40 million people in California the strongest data privacy rights in the country.

The CCPA is the first privacy law in the United States to follow in the footsteps of the 2018 European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It expands the rights of consumers by making it mandatory for companies to be more transparent about how they collect, use, and disclose personal information. It requires companies to:  

• Disclose the ways they use and sell personal data 
• Enable California residents to opt-out of their personal data being sold
• Disclose any data collected from the consumer
• Delete data associated with an individual when asked to do so

As for fines and enforcement, penalties resulting from violations of the CCPA can be up to $7,500 for each infraction. For companies interacting with thousands of consumers across their business, these fines could add up quickly. And, more costly than fines, the damage to a company’s reputation, if such violations were to occur, would be hard to overcome. 

Solutions to Help

Here at Jornaya, we recently extended our compliance product suite with Privacy Guardian to assist companies in meeting the requirements of the CCPA as well as expected future state and federal regulations. We see this as an opportunity to help the entire ecosystem with a value-add service that aligns with our vision of making every consumer’s major life purchase journey exceptional.

Privacy Guardian builds off of the core solution that has helped hundreds of companies improve their TCPA compliance strategy for the last six years, with an expanded feature set to specifically address the requirements of the CCPA. We will continue to enhance Privacy Guardian to meet the needs of the CCPA and the expected future privacy regulations across the U.S. 

Learn more about Privacy Guardian in our press release.

Lauren Dickstein is VP of Product of Jornaya.