A Legal Perspective
How Does CCPA Act Impact Your Company?

The California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”) and the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link.
Must a business that does not sell a California consumer’s Personal Information (“PI”) comply?

When the CCPA was signed into law confusion abounded about how to comply with it. One major question was whether an effected business that does not sell a consumer’s PI, as defined in Section 1798.140(o)(1)(A)-(K), needed to comply with Sections 1798.120 and 1798.135. Section 1798.120 created an opt-out right to the sale of a consumer’s PI and Section 1798.135 provides in part that, “A business that is required to comply with Section 1798.120 shall…Provide a clear and conspicuous link…Titled “Do Not Sale [sic.] My Personal Information” on its website’s home page. While it may seem clear initially that these sections would not apply to a business that does not sell PI, Section 1798.140(t)(1) created confusion as to what a sale was as the term was broadly defined and could be construed to mean a transfer of PI between a business and a service provider or third party for valuable consideration. What constituted valuable consideration was not defined, but many believe it should be defined as it is in contract law and goes beyond a simple monetary amount. However, Section 1798.140(t)(2)(C) exempted sharing PI with a service provider as defined in Section 1798.140(v) so long as such a service is for a business purpose and the service provider does not sell such PI.

On October 11, 2019, the California Attorney General published its Proposed Text of Regulations which may be found at here.

In Section 999.306(d)(1) and (2) of the Regulations, the Attorney General has clarified the CCPA by addressing the question presented above. In that Section, “A business is exempt from providing a notice of right to opt-out if: (1) It does not, and will not, sell personal information collected during the time period during which the notice of right to opt-out is not posted; and (2) It states in its privacy policy that it does not and will not sell personal information…”. Therefore, a business that does not sell PI and does not sell any PI collected during the time period it lacks an opt-out notice on its website(s) and modifies its privacy policy to note such, does not need to create a “Do Not Sale [sic.] My Personal Information” link on its webpage(s). Also, at a minimum, an exempt business will need to have a contract or some type of data processing addendum for existing contracts with each service provider that receives PI prohibiting the service provider from selling PI and affirmatively certifying such. However, there are many compliance issues for effected businesses and while some effected businesses may not need to comply with certain sections, a thorough review of all sections of the CCPA will need to be performed by each business to ensure compliance.

The Zellman Group, LLC is committed to proactively addressing legislation that may affect us or our clients and maintaining complete transparency of our policies and services. The Zellman Group, LLC does not and will never sell PI data.

James F. Welborn, Jr. is a New Jersey licensed attorney with The Law Offices of Michael Ira Asen, P.C. and Ronald D. Halpern is a California licensed attorney in private practice.

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The civil recovery business saw more change in 2018 than in the preceding 30 years combined, says Stuart Levine, CEO of The Zellman Group, an LP services and consulting company that offers retailers a suite of solutions including Civil Recovery, ORC Recovery, Analytics and more. In this LPNN interview, Stuart talks about the state of civil recovery, where he sees it going over the next few years, and how Zellman Group's dedication to customer service, client culture and ethics, together with state-of-the-art technology, keeps them at the forefront of recovery solutions.