This law grants consumers a right to request companies that are in the business of selling data to disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information that is collected about the consumer. It grants the consumer the right to request deletion of personal information and requires the business to delete their information upon request. Failure to respond could result in penalties.
"Personal information" means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Personal information includes, but not limited to using a real name, alias, online identifier, postal address, email address, etc.
The bill, however, specifically allows use of personal information that is gathered from "publicly available information".
DBS is in the business of selling data for use in advertising goods and services. This data is obtained through a variety of sources - most comes from public data and others is inferred or obtained by other self-reported sources.
To comply with this, a suppression file would need to be created of people who make this request. We would have to rely on each client to keep a file of people requesting to be taken off a list and suppress from each mailing.
Because we do not believe a suppression list could be maintained without error, we will change our practices, for the time being, to be in compliance by selling lists for mailing in California that are addressed only to "Resident" rather than a specific name.
We value our California clients and hope implementation of this law does not affect your marketing efforts. Please reach out for any questions or follow-up on this issue.
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Go to this link to read the language in the full bill, California Privacy Law 2020
