Sephora Hit by First CCPA Enforcement Action, Settlement Carries $1.2 Million in Penalties for Targeted Advertising Privacy Violations

By Scott Ikeda for CPO Magazine
Friday, September 2, 2022

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Though it was not a formal grace period, the lull of about two years between the onset of the state’s data privacy terms and these CCPA initial enforcement actions may have caused some businesses to believe that they had little to worry about until the CRPA took over in 2023. The specter of a federal law that could preempt California state law has also recently been raised by Congress in the form of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act.

Ilia Kolochenko, Founder/CEO/Chief Architect of ImmuniWeb, sees this as a near-term win for California consumers but a long-term problem that could end up being to their detriment: “Whilst being good news for consumers, this is an alarming trend for businesses. Contrasted to the EU, in the United States, there is still no nationwide and overarching privacy legislation on the federal level, pushing individual states to legislate on the matter and fill the gap. If the trend persists, in a decade, we will have 50 heterogeneous privacy and data protection regimes, making business in the US impossible both for domestic and foreign companies … polarized and incongruent enforcement from one state to another undermines the predictability and certainty of the legal landscape. That being said, federal legislation that would finally harmonize the American data protection regime is urgently needed.”

The key takeaway from the Sephora case is that CCPA enforcement is clearly on the table for at least the rest of this year, and that the Attorney General’s office is actively inspecting California websites for compliance. Consumers are able to bring state attention to potential CCPA violations via an online submission form. The case also illustrates that a failure to cure can trigger a broader investigation that potentially turns up additional privacy violations and leads to bigger fines. Read Full Article