People Want Their Privacy Back: California Consumer Privacy Act

Patients & Purpose
2 min readMay 22, 2020

Over the past 3 years, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has been developed and amended, and it will soon go into effect. It will change the way we acquire data for the purposes of targeting and communicating with consumers.

This groundbreaking regulation comes on the heels of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is expected to expand into a nationwide privacy law.

So what exactly is the CCPA?

The CCPA creates new consumer rights relating to the access, deletion, and sharing of personal information that is collected by businesses. It will also establish procedures to facilitate consumers’ new rights and provide guidance to businesses on how to comply. The CCPA was enacted in 2018 but will not go into effect until July 1, 2020 — so there is still a little time to prepare.

What should I do in order to be compliant?

  • Ask your media and data collection partners what policies they’ve put in place to be compliant with CCPA
  • Once you obtain those partner policies, have your legal department review them against your own corporate governance standards
  • Ensure that any marketing materials that actively or passively collect consumer data let consumers know what their privacy rights are regarding that data — examples may include CRM, co-pay cards, and app registrations

Here are 2 examples of how pharma companies are addressing CCPA:

How will this affect my marketing?

CCPA requires marketers to do the following:

· Be more transparent about data collection policies

· Give consumers clear methods to request their personal data

· Prevent the sale of consumer data to third parties

What does the future hold for CCPA and its expansion beyond California?

CCPA is still undergoing potential amendments and draft changes. Keep in mind that it was originally crafted in 2018 and has seen many iterations since then.

We know that it is going into effect in July 2020 and that New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are in the process of drafting their own consumer privacy laws.

Global breaches of data privacy have been well documented. We should expect these kinds of laws to continue to be implemented.

We recommend that marketers be transparent about the consumer data they’re collecting — this will help build a trusted relationship with customers.

Coming soon: Google’s plan to eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome

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Patients & Purpose

A full-service agency dedicated to patients and marketing health brands