§ 1798.185. — 1798.185. (Amended by Stats. 2025, Ch. 67, Sec. 28.)

Regulations
(a)
On or before July 1, 2020, the Attorney General shall solicit broad public participation and adopt regulations to further the purposes of this title, including, but not limited to, the following areas:
(1)
Updating or adding categories of personal information to those enumerated in subdivision (c) of Section 1798.130 and subdivision (v) of Section 1798.140, and updating or adding categories of sensitive personal information to those enumerated in subdivision (ae) of Section 1798.140 in order to address changes in technology, data collection practices, obstacles to implementation, and privacy concerns.
(2)
Updating as needed the definitions
of “deidentified” and “unique identifier” to address changes in technology, data collection, obstacles to implementation, and privacy concerns, and adding, modifying, or deleting categories to the definition of designated methods for submitting requests to facilitate a consumer’s ability to obtain information from a business pursuant to Section 1798.130. The authority to update the definition of “deidentified” shall not apply to deidentification standards set forth in Section 164.514 of Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, where such information previously was “protected health information” as defined in Section 160.103 of Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
(3)
Establishing any exceptions necessary to comply with state or federal law, including, but not limited to, those relating to trade secrets and intellectual property rights, within one year of passage of this title and as needed thereafter, with the intention that trade
secrets should not be disclosed in response to a verifiable consumer request.
(4)
Establishing rules and procedures for the following:
(A)
To facilitate and govern the submission of a request by a consumer to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information pursuant to Section 1798.120 and to limit the use of a consumer’s sensitive personal information pursuant to Section 1798.121 to ensure that consumers have the ability to exercise their choices without undue burden and to prevent business from engaging in deceptive or harassing conduct, including in retaliation against consumers for exercising their rights, while allowing businesses to inform consumers of the consequences of their decision to opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information or to limit the use of their sensitive personal information.
(B)
To govern business compliance with a consumer’s opt-out request.
(C)
For the development and use of a recognizable and uniform opt-out logo or button by all businesses to promote consumer awareness of the opportunity to opt out of the sale of personal information.
(5)
Establishing rules, procedures, and any exceptions necessary to ensure that the notices and information that businesses are required to provide pursuant to this title are provided in a manner that may be easily understood by the average consumer, are accessible to consumers with disabilities, and are available in the language primarily used to interact with the consumer, including establishing rules and guidelines regarding financial incentives within one year of passage of this title and as needed thereafter.
(6)
Establishing rules and
procedures to further the purposes of Sections 1798.105, 1798.106, 1798.110, and 1798.115 and to facilitate a consumer’s or the consumer’s authorized agent’s ability to delete personal information, correct inaccurate personal information pursuant to Section 1798.106, or obtain information pursuant to Section 1798.130, with the goal of minimizing the administrative burden on consumers, taking into account available technology, security concerns, and the burden on the business, to govern a business’ determination that a request for information received from a consumer is a verifiable consumer request, including treating a request submitted through a password-protected account maintained by the consumer with the business while the consumer is logged into the account as a verifiable consumer request and providing a mechanism for a consumer who does not maintain an account with the business to request information through the business’ authentication of the consumer’s identity, within one year of passage of this
title and as needed thereafter.
(7)
Establishing how often, and under what circumstances, a consumer may request a correction pursuant to Section 1798.106, including standards governing the following:
(A)
How a business responds to a request for correction, including exceptions for requests to which a response is impossible or would involve disproportionate effort, and requests for correction of accurate information.
(B)
How concerns regarding the accuracy of the information may be resolved.
(C)
The steps a business may take to prevent fraud.
(D)
If a business rejects a request to correct personal information collected and analyzed concerning a consumer’s health, the right of a consumer to
provide a written addendum to the business with respect to any item or statement regarding any such personal information that the consumer believes to be incomplete or incorrect. The addendum shall be limited to 250 words per alleged incomplete or incorrect item and shall clearly indicate in writing that the consumer requests the addendum to be made a part of the consumer’s record.
(8)
Establishing the standard to govern a business’ determination, pursuant to subparagraph (B) of paragraph (2) of subdivision (a) of Section 1798.130, that providing information beyond the 12-month period in a response to a verifiable consumer request is impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort.
(9)
Issuing regulations further defining and adding to the business purposes, including other notified purposes, for which businesses, service providers, and contractors may use consumers’
personal information consistent with consumers’ expectations, and further defining the business purposes for which service providers and contractors may combine consumers’ personal information obtained from different sources, except as provided for in paragraph (6) of subdivision (e) of Section 1798.140.
(10)
Issuing regulations identifying those business purposes, including other notified purposes, for which service providers and contractors may use consumers’ personal information received pursuant to a written contract with a business, for the service provider or contractor’s own business purposes, with the goal of maximizing consumer privacy.
(11)
Issuing regulations to further define “intentionally interacts,” with the goal of maximizing consumer privacy.
(12)
Issuing regulations to further define “precise
geolocation,” including if the size defined is not sufficient to protect consumer privacy in sparsely populated areas or when the personal information is used for normal operational purposes, including billing.
(13)
Issuing regulations to define the term “specific pieces of information obtained from the consumer” with the goal of maximizing a consumer’s right to access relevant personal information while minimizing the delivery of information to a consumer that would not be useful to the consumer, including system log information and other technical data. For delivery of the most sensitive personal information, the regulations may require a higher standard of authentication provided that the agency shall monitor the impact of the higher standard on the right of consumers to obtain their personal information to ensure that the requirements of verification do not result in the unreasonable denial of verifiable consumer requests.
(14)
Issuing regulations requiring businesses whose processing of consumers’ personal information presents significant risk to consumers’ privacy or security, to:
(A)
Perform a cybersecurity audit on an annual basis, including defining the scope of the audit and establishing a process to ensure that audits are thorough and independent. The factors to be considered in determining when processing may result in significant risk to the security of personal information shall include the size and complexity of the business and the nature and scope of processing activities.
(B)
Submit to the California Privacy Protection Agency on a regular basis a risk assessment with respect to their processing of personal information, including whether the processing involves sensitive personal information, and identifying and weighing the
benefits resulting from the processing to the business, the consumer, other stakeholders, and the public, against the potential risks to the rights of the consumer associated with that processing, with the goal of restricting or prohibiting the processing if the risks to privacy of the consumer outweigh the benefits resulting from processing to the consumer, the business, other stakeholders, and the public. Nothing in this section shall require a business to divulge trade secrets.
(15)
Issuing regulations governing access and opt-out rights with respect to a business’ use of automated decisionmaking technology, including profiling and requiring a business’ response to access requests to include meaningful information about the logic involved in those decisionmaking processes, as well as a description of the likely outcome of the process with respect to the consumer.
(16)
Issuing
regulations to further define a “law enforcement agency-approved investigation” for purposes of the exception in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) of Section 1798.145.
(17)
Issuing regulations to define the scope and process for the exercise of the agency’s audit authority, to establish criteria for selection of persons to audit, and to protect consumers’ personal information from disclosure to an auditor in the absence of a court order, warrant, or subpoena.
(18)
(A)
Issuing regulations to define the requirements and technical specifications for an opt-out preference signal sent by a platform, technology, or mechanism, to indicate a consumer’s intent to opt out of the sale or sharing of the consumer’s personal information and to limit the use or disclosure of the consumer’s sensitive personal information. The requirements and
specifications for the opt-out preference signal should be updated from time to time to reflect the means by which consumers interact with businesses, and should:
(i)
Ensure that the manufacturer of a platform or browser or device that sends the opt-out preference signal cannot unfairly disadvantage another business.
(ii)
Ensure that the opt-out preference signal is consumer-friendly, clearly described, and easy to use by an average consumer and does not require that the consumer provide additional information beyond what is necessary.
(iii)
Clearly represent a consumer’s intent and be free of defaults constraining or presupposing that intent.
(iv)
Ensure that the opt-out preference signal does not conflict with other commonly used privacy settings or
tools that consumers may employ.
(v)
Provide a mechanism for the consumer to selectively consent to a business’ sale of the consumer’s personal information, or the use or disclosure of the consumer’s sensitive personal information, without affecting the consumer’s preferences with respect to other businesses or disabling the opt-out preference signal globally.
(vi)
State that in the case of a page or setting view that the consumer accesses to set the opt-out preference signal, the consumer should see up to three choices, including:
(I)
Global opt out from sale and sharing of personal information, including a direction to limit the use of sensitive personal information.
(II)
Choice to “Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information.”
(III)
Choice titled “Do Not Sell/Do Not Share My Personal Information for Cross-Context Behavioral Advertising.”
(B)
Issuing regulations to establish technical specifications for an opt-out preference signal that allows the consumer, or the consumer’s parent or guardian, to specify that the consumer is less than 13 years of age or at least 13 years of age and less than 16 years of age.
(C)
Issuing regulations, with the goal of strengthening consumer privacy while considering the legitimate operational interests of businesses, to govern the use or disclosure of a consumer’s sensitive personal information, notwithstanding the consumer’s direction to limit the use or disclosure of the consumer’s sensitive personal information, including:
(i)
Determining any
additional purposes for which a business may use or disclose a consumer’s sensitive personal information.
(ii)
Determining the scope of activities permitted under paragraph (8) of subdivision (e) of Section 1798.140, as authorized by subdivision (a) of Section 1798.121, to ensure that the activities do not involve health-related research.
(iii)
Ensuring the functionality of the business’ operations.
(iv)
Ensuring that the exemption in subdivision (d) of Section 1798.121 for sensitive personal information applies to information that is collected or processed incidentally, or without the purpose of inferring characteristics about a consumer, while ensuring that businesses do not use the exemption for the purpose of evading consumers’ rights to limit the use and disclosure of their sensitive personal information under
Section 1798.121.
(19)
Issuing regulations to govern how a business that has elected to comply with subdivision (b) of Section 1798.135 responds to the opt-out preference signal and provides consumers with the opportunity subsequently to consent to the sale or sharing of their personal information or the use and disclosure of their sensitive personal information for purposes in addition to those authorized by subdivision (a) of Section 1798.121. The regulations should:
(A)
Strive to promote competition and consumer choice and be technology neutral.
(B)
Ensure that the business does not respond to an opt-out preference signal by:
(i)
Intentionally degrading the functionality of the consumer experience.
(ii)
Charging the consumer a fee in response to the consumer’s opt-out preferences.
(iii)
Making any products or services not function properly or fully for the consumer, as compared to consumers who do not use the opt-out preference signal.
(iv)
Attempting to coerce the consumer to opt in to the sale or sharing of the consumer’s personal information, or the use or disclosure of the consumer’s sensitive personal information, by stating or implying that the use of the opt-out preference signal will adversely affect the consumer as compared to consumers who do not use the opt-out preference signal, including stating or implying that the consumer will not be able to use the business’ products or services or that those products or services may not function properly or fully.
(v)
Displaying any notification or
popup in response to the consumer’s opt-out preference signal.
(C)
Ensure that any link to a web page or its supporting content that allows the consumer to consent to opt in:
(i)
Is not part of a popup, notice, banner, or other intrusive design that obscures any part of the web page the consumer intended to visit from full view or that interferes with or impedes in any way the consumer’s experience visiting or browsing the web page or internet website the consumer intended to visit.
(ii)
Does not require or imply that the consumer must click the link to receive full functionality of any products or services, including the internet website.
(iii)
Does not make use of any dark patterns.
(iv)
Applies only to the business with which the consumer intends to interact.
(D)
Strive to curb coercive or deceptive practices in response to an opt-out preference signal but should not unduly restrict businesses that are trying in good faith to comply with Section 1798.135.
(20)
Review existing Insurance Code provisions and regulations relating to consumer privacy, except those relating to insurance rates or pricing, to determine whether any provisions of the Insurance Code provide greater protection to consumers than the provisions of this title. Upon completing its review, the agency shall adopt a regulation that applies only the more protective provisions of this title to insurance companies. For the purpose of clarity, the Insurance Commissioner shall have jurisdiction over insurance rates and pricing.
(21)
Harmonizing the regulations governing opt-out mechanisms, notices to consumers, and other operational mechanisms in this title to promote clarity and the functionality of this title for consumers.
(b)
The Attorney General may adopt additional regulations as necessary to further the purposes of this title.
(c)
The Attorney General shall not bring an enforcement action under this title until six months after the publication of the final regulations issued pursuant to this section or July 1, 2020, whichever is sooner.
(d)
Notwithstanding subdivision (a), the timeline for adopting final regulations required by the act adding this subdivision shall be July 1, 2022. Beginning the later of July 1, 2021, or six months after the agency provides notice to the Attorney General that it is prepared to begin
rulemaking under this title, the authority assigned to the Attorney General to adopt regulations under this section shall be exercised by the California Privacy Protection Agency. Notwithstanding any other law, civil and administrative enforcement of the provisions of law added or amended by this act shall not commence until July 1, 2023, and shall only apply to violations occurring on or after that date. Enforcement of provisions of law contained in the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 amended by this act shall remain in effect and shall be enforceable until the same provisions of this act become enforceable.

Legislative History

Amended by Stats. 2025, Ch. 67, Sec. 28. (AB 1170) Effective January 1, 2026.