Hacking the California Consumer Privacy Act for Fun and Profit (and freedom and privacy)

A new California law that will help protect you from scams and misinformation, by taking control of your personal information. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect on January 1, 2020. The law is overwhelmingly popular, with 88% of California citizens in favor and just 5% opposed. An an individual, you will have important new privacy rights.

But From the web site point of view, CCPA is a big oportunity. Yes, the law has some new requirements to comply with, but compliance is just the beginning of the story. For legit sites that respect people's privacy, CCPA helps shift the balance of power on the web away from the "data brokers" that share people's sensitive health and finance information on the Internet, and toward sites that people trust.

• How to find and use the CCPA "Do Not Sell" feature on company web sites -- and how to automate your CCPA "Do Not Sell" preferences with browser extensions

• How to comply with CCPA's new requirements -- for most web sites that is easy.

• Industry standards that claim to implement CCPA protection, and how to use them on your site to best protect your users.

• What you can learn by exercising your lesser-known CCPA rights.

Regulation alone can't fix the surveillance economy problem, but CCPA provides some opportunities for technical measures to protect people's information and increase revenues for legit businesses.