While the European Economic Area, including the European Union, has led the modern privacy revolution, specifically by enacting and enforcing the groundbreaking General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the protection of consumer privacy is also gaining momentum around the globe. In the United States, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is leading the way. The CCPA will fundamentally change how businesses interact and handle consumer data by transferring power over such data to the individual. Under the CCPA, individual consumers are granted certain rights to their data that did not previously exist in the United States—outside of the context of the finance and health care industries.

Despite the CCPA taking a less progressive consumer opt-out approach to the collection of consumer data (compared to the GDPR’s more consumer friendly opt-in regime), the consumer rights under the CCPA will force businesses to radically change how they process consumer data, including implementing data mapping of all such data collected, stored, shared and otherwise processed. The five consumer rights which will have the biggest impact on how businesses process consumer data are:

Right to Information