The California Attorney General’s Office recently released a fourth set of proposed regulatory modifications to the California Consumer Privacy Act (the “CCPA”).

As background, the Attorney General’s Office had only just recently given notice of a third set of modifications on October 12, 2020.  The third set of modifications revised the regulations relating to the notice of a consumer’s right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information.  Our previous post detailed the specific changes in the third set of modifications.

The Attorney General’s Office received around 20 comments in response to the third set of modifications; these modifications have not yet been accepted and finalized.  The fourth set of modifications are in response to the comments to the third set of modifications and are intended to clarify and conform the proposed regulations to existing law.  The changes made include:

• Revisions to section 999.306, subd. (b)(3), which clarifies that a business selling personal information collected from consumers in the course of interacting with them offline shall inform consumers of their right to opt out of the sale of their personal information by an offline method.
• Proposed section 999.315, subd. (f), which reinstates the requirement for a uniform opt-out button to be used “in addition to . . . but not in lieu of . . . a ‘Do Not Sell My Personal Information link.”

The Attorney General’s Office is accepting written comments regarding the fourth set of proposed modifications until December 28, 2020.

The recently proposed modifications show that the Attorney General has no intention to slow the rollout of CCPA regulations after the recent voter approval of the California Privacy Rights Act (the “CPRA”), which further modifies and strengthens the existing protections in the CCPA.  Notably, the Attorney General is also allowed to issue regulations under the CPRA until that power is ultimately transferred to the newly created California Privacy Protection Agency.