As school districts increasingly rely on Zoom to facilitate online classes, and in many cases are expressly directing students to download and use the app, it implicates new legal concerns for the company.
Continue Reading Zoom & Schools: New Privacy Issues Arise
As large portions of society become subject to coronavirus-related quarantines, increasing numbers of people have turned to web-based communications platforms for classes, meetings, events, and socialization. One such platform, Zoom, has become, in some estimations, the most important app in the business world, and the single most downloaded mobile app in all of India.
With such rapid expansion in its user base, there was bound to be increased focus on the company. Over the last few weeks, Zoom has faced questions related to the legality of its privacy and information-gathering practices. In fact, in addition to addressing concerns on social media and national television programs, Zoom must also now defend itself in a new class action lawsuit involving the newly enacted California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), which we analyze below.
Continue Reading New CCPA Lawsuit Against Zoom: Issues to Watch
On March 11, 2020, California Attorney General Xavier Barrera released a second revision to the draft California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) regulations. The new draft contains a number of important changes to the regulatory landscape under the CCPA. One very specific change—concerning data scraping—caught my eye. Since the CCPA has been discussed and, indeed, even earlier in connection with the GDPR, there has been an open question of whether entities that pull personal data from public sources (e.g., from the publicly available LinkedIn pages) were required to provide notice to the individuals whose data had been collected. The new regulations answer the question, at least in part.
Continue Reading Data Scraping Under the Revised CCPA Regulations
The cyber insurance markets are beginning to adapt to the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which went into effect on January 1, 2020.
There is great variation in how cyber insurance policies currently address risks under the CCPA. And further developments are expected as the law begins to impact companies under its jurisdiction—that is,
California employers collectively breathed a sigh of relief when the state legislature delayed most of the California Consumer Privacy Act’s (CCPA) application to them until 2021. However, there’s not much time to relax: two significant CCPA provisions took effect in 2020, and the legislature is expected to pass an employer-specific data privacy law this year.
To ensure compliance with the provisions taking effect this year, and prepare for what may be coming next year, covered employers should consider taking the following steps now:
Continue Reading What Steps Should Employers Take Now Regarding the CCPA?
It was recently discovered that a certain software product, in this case used by numerous cannabis companies around the country, was not secure and allowed access to consumer data of companies using the software. You can read more about it in this linked article. This isn’t the first time a security vulnerability was introduced by the use of third-party software, and it won’t be the last. The CCPA requires “reasonable security measures” be taken to protect consumer data. It is likely that employing vulnerable software will be seen to violate this standard (it has yet to be tested), but will it lead to liability of the company employing the software? I think it will.
So what is a company to do when purchasing third-party software that will store or otherwise have access to consumer data?
Continue Reading Data Security: Are you looking at your third party software?