Understanding CPRA: What Is Considered Personal Information?
The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) becomes effective on January 1st, 2023, with a significant shift in its compliance requirements. Companies subject to the CPRA must adopt new privacy practices and pay close attention to personal information they collect, process, and use. In this blog article, we will discuss what constitutes personal information under CPRA, particularly as this topic is the cornerstone of the new regulations.
What is CPRA?
Before diving into the concept of personal information, it is essential to understand what CPRA is. CPRA is a comprehensive privacy rights act to protect Californians’ personal information. The act is designed to strengthen the 2018 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) by introducing new privacy rights, imposing increased financial penalties for noncompliance, and establishing the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) to enforce these new regulations.
Personal Information Defined under CPRA
CPRA defines personal information as any information relating to an identified or identifiable consumer or household. The CCPA did not clarify what constituted personal information, creating confusion amongst businesses.
Under CPRA, personal information includes the following categories:
- Identifiers such as name, alias, address, email address, and social security numbers.
- Protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion.
- Internet activity information such as browsing history, search history, and interactions with websites, emails, or advertisements.
- Geolocation data.
- Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, or olfactory information.
- Professional and employment information.
- Education information.
- Inferences from other personal information that reveals the consumer’s preferences, tendencies, behavior or psychological information.
Why Does Personal Information Matter?
The information listed above is an essential aspect of any consumer’s identity. It is the foundation of how businesses interact with their customers. Personal information is not only used for marketing and advertising purposes, but also for research, personalization, and service provision. At the same time, it can also be used to harm individuals through identity theft, fraud, or discrimination. Hence, CPRA has introduced stricter regulations to protect consumers and safeguard their personal data.
Data Minimization and Retention Periods
One of the key concepts of CPRA is data minimization and establishing a clear retention period. Companies should only collect data that is necessary for their business operations and provide consumers with a clear explanation of how that data will be used. Additionally, personal information that is no longer required for business operation should be purged from the company’s database.
While the new data minimization and retention requirements align with existing security best practices, it is expected to have a significant impact on businesses that collect and process personal information.
Conclusion
CPRA is a significant turning point towards establishing data security and privacy standards. Personal information is a crucial component in all business operations and is essential for businesses that operate online. CPRA seeks to establish regulations that focus on transparency, ensuring that personal data is collected and processed with the utmost security and privacy.
Companies should understand that personal information is not limited to the standard identifiers but rather reaches further demographics and behaviors of the user. Understanding the parameters of personal information under CPRA is the initial step in establishing a more secure and compliant organization.
