Your Privacy Rights Under the CCPA: A Consumer's Guide

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) represents one of the most significant privacy laws in the United States. In the absence of comprehensive federal privacy legislation, California has become a forerunner for digital privacy, with other states using the CCPA as a model for their own laws.

Consumer Rights Under the CCPA

The CCPA establishes six key consumer rights, the last two added by the 2020 CPRA amendment:

Right to know: Consumers can request information about what personal data a business collects, its sources, the purposes of collection, and with whom it is shared. This is separate from a business's obligation to provide a notice at collection, which must be displayed proactively.

Right to delete or correct: Consumers can request erasure or correction of their personal information, with limited exceptions for publicly available data, credit reporting information, and data needed for legal claims. Businesses must comply within 90 days.

Right to opt out: Consumers can opt out of the sale and sharing of personal information. Websites must provide a visible "Do Not Sell Or Share" link. The law explicitly covers sharing data with advertising platforms for marketing and retargeting purposes. The Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser mechanism allows automated opt-out requests across all visited websites.

Right to limit sensitive information use: Certain data categories -- including government identifiers, precise geolocation, health data, genetic data, and information about sexual orientation -- receive additional protection. Consumers can restrict businesses to using this data only as strictly necessary to provide requested services.

Right of non-discrimination: Businesses cannot penalize consumers for exercising their CCPA rights.

How CCPA Compares to the GDPR

Some CCPA rights mirror GDPR provisions: the right to know, erasure, and correction function similarly across both frameworks. However, the underlying philosophies differ fundamentally.

The CCPA empowers consumers to decide about their data through opt-out mechanisms. Companies enjoy considerable freedom as long as consumers do not actively object. The GDPR takes the opposite approach, imposing strict upfront requirements on organizations before any data processing occurs.

The consumer-empowerment model has practical limitations. Visiting dozens of websites daily and individually managing opt-out preferences for each one is unrealistic. While Global Privacy Control helps, adoption remains limited. The GDPR's approach of placing the privacy burden on organizations rather than individuals arguably provides more effective protection, though at the cost of complex compliance requirements that can challenge smaller businesses.

On sensitive data, the CCPA's inclusion of precise geolocation and government identifiers is notably forward-thinking. However, the GDPR's prescriptive restrictions on sensitive data processing are considerably stronger than the CCPA's opt-out framework.