The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a bill passed by the California State Legislature in 2018, which becomes effective on January 1, 2020, and will most likely become enforceable on July 1, 2020 (see section 1798.185(c) for more details). It is meant to provide California residents with greater control over how their personal data is collected, sold and used by businesses.
TownNews believes data rights and information security are very important, so we have been working with our legal team to get ready for the changes which will be coming in 2020.
Here are a few key points to understand:
TownNews understands that the state of the law with respect to personal data, cookies, behavioral tracking, and consent is relatively unsettled and legal guidelines are still changing. More than a half dozen bills have passed in the last few months that significantly change some aspects of the CCPA law. In addition, several sections of the law are to be clarified by the California Attorney General in a set of regulations intended to be announced before the enforcement period begins in July. We are watching the changes closely and will make adjustments as needed in the future.
Although each website owner is responsible for the implementation of his/her own strategy on CCPA and other data privacy laws, TownNews understands our role as your technology partner to help provide you with solutions. As such, we will be working with our development team and other business partners to provide you with various options on how to address these privacy laws before the enforcement date of July, 2020.
TownNews functions as a “service provider” to our clients and, in that capacity, does not use, disclose, or retain user data that we receive on behalf of our clients other than as is needed to provide services.
We recommend that before making any decisions, you discuss data privacy strategies with your legal team, and determine whether or not your organization needs to comply with CCPA or other state laws.
Currently, our main strategies going forward include:
Keeping abreast of TownNews’ responsibilities as it pertains to user data, data breaches, and ensuring that we work with data in a responsible, ethical way that follows appropriate laws.
If there is a request for a user’s deletion of account or access via download of data, TownNews will implement a new process where this can be requested. We will send information about this process in the next few days.
Helping individual websites update their Privacy Policy or Terms of Use on the BLOX CMS site to reflect your legal strategies. As previously stated, TownNews emphasizes that you should consult with your legal team on any changes to your Privacy Policy or Terms of Use documents.
If you need help with any of these items, or if you have additional questions, please contact us at 1-800-293-9576 or by submitting a ticket through our support portal.
