Matthew Rosenquist breaks down new California privacy rules that ban deceptive opt-out tactics. Companies have been burying opt-out buttons in multi-page mazes, using confusing language, and demanding extra personal information to block data sales. The updated CCPA now prohibits these tricks.
Chapters
California privacy regulations have just been updated to address some shady practices that have been going on. Now, the CPA, the California Consumer Privacy Act, it's been around a couple of years since 2018. It's really designed to protect people's privacy rights, allow them to opt out of their data being sold, or for a company to retain their data, things of that sort. Well, not all companies have been acting ethically in complying with the CCPA. And what it's supposed to allow is people to go out to their website and easily opt out and apply their personal choices to how their data is being managed. Now, California is an unusual state because it is the only state in the United States that actually defines privacy as a right. It's actually in our constitution, the state constitution. So the state takes it very seriously. And what we ended up seeing after the CCPA was enacted is you started having some companies, most of which who focus their business around gathering troves of data and selling it, some of these companies would go out and put barriers to people trying to opt out. We saw issues where you would have to traverse a maze of pages and clicks and links to finally get to the place that you could opt out. We've seen gauntlets set up of marketing materials that you would have to traverse and view and watch that would try and convince you that opting out was a bad thing. We've seen sometimes humorous ways of, uh, double negatives, you know, in wording that would confuse users in selecting their true options. And the very worst that I've seen, and I have seen quite a bit, the very worst is some companies were actually requiring people to provide more private information before they would allow them to actually opt out. Now, as a privacy professional, that infuriates me. Um, but again, now the CCPA has been modified. I want to thank— personally thank the California Attorney General, uh, Javier Becerra, who— him and his team got these things pushed through. And the changes that they made are really targeting these types of unscrupulous maneuvers by companies to basically undermine Californians' right to opt out. So this was needed. There are many more changes that also be— that also need to happen, but this is a great step forward. So thank you to Javier and his team, and I hope that there will actually be many more changes in regulations. I've got a few ideas myself. I'll put it in another video, but thank you, and all of California thanks you.
