Are you looking for an easy to follow tutorial to make Google Analytics CCPA Compliant?
You’re lucky! Because you just got one!
I am going to share the exact simple steps in this tutorial that you can use to make your Google Analytics compile to CCPA.
But before going further, you must be aware what is CCPA…
What Is CCPA?
California Consumer Privacy Act(CCPA) is a state statute intended to enhance the privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California, United States.
This law went into affect from January 1st, 2020 and enforceable from July 1st, 2020.
CCPA aimed to enhance the consumer privacy of residents of California, United States. The organizations should make it transparent what kind of information they are taking, how they use it and whom they share it.
Below are some of rights that comes under CCPA for California residents:
- Right To Be Informed: Users should be known about how a website collect their information, how they use it and whom they share it with.
- Right To Have Data Deleted: California citizens have the right to get their data deleted from a website.
- Right To See What Data: They also have the right to view stored data in the past 12 months.
- Right To Equal Services And Price: California citizens should be given the same price and services as others.
- Right To Opt-Out: They can opt-out from websites selling their information with third-parties.
Who Needs To Be CCPA Compliant?
It is not for everyone as like GDPR!
You need to be CCPA Compliant only if your business meets the following conditions:
- Annual Gross revenue is $25 million or higher
- 50% or more of your annual revenue comes from selling consumer’s personal information
- If you buy, receive, or sell personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, devices, or households.
Is Google Analytics CCPA Compliant?
Google Analytics is a free and very powerful analytics tool that help in measuring a website traffic and user information. GA assigns your visitors an UserID and records personal data like IP Address, Gender, Location, Device, Age etc.
So, it is clearly falls under CCPAs explanation of consumer’s personal information.
But you can’t just disable Google Analytics on your website for CCPA. Because Google Analytics is a very powerful tool that helps in knowing about your visitors and without GA, you’ll be guessing what will work and not will not.
Instead of disabling Google Analytics, you can make some little changes to make your business CCPA Compliant.
Here is how you can do this:
How To Make Google Analytics CCPA Compliant?
I am going to divide this process into three simple steps… You just need to follow them one by one to make Google Analytics CCPA Compliant.
Step: 1 Install MonsterInsights And Its EU Compliance Addon
If you aren’t aware of MonsterInsights…
MonsterInsighits is the no.1 Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that makes it easy to view and understand Google Analytics Data directly from the WordPress dashboard.
It can also make it easy for you to make Google Analytics CCPA Compliant with the use of its EU Compliance Addon.
The EU Compliance Addon allows you to automate the different processes to make your website CCPA compliant. You can easily enable or disable any kind of tracking using a simple click.
Here’s what you can do with the addon:
- Anonymize IP address for Google Analytics hits
- Disable UserID tracking on Google Analytics
- Disable demographics and interest reports for remarketing and advertising
- Disable author tracking Google Analytics and custom dimensions addon
- Enable ga() compatibility mode
- Allow AMP addon users to agree with the Google AMP consent box before tracking their data
- Easy integration with CookieBot and Cookie Notice WordPress plugins
Now it’s time to install the MonsterInsights plugin into your WordPress website. You can easily install by going to Plugins>Add New and search for the MonsterInsights.
Click on Install and then Activate to make the plugin live in your website.
Once you have installed the MonsterInsights plugin, now install the EU Compliance Addon which you can do by going to Insights>Addons.
After installing the EU Compliance Addon, you need to go to Insights>Settings>Engagement and scroll down to find EU Compliance. Here you can see all the setting of EU Compliance. You can make them enable and disable as per your need.
Now you have successfully done it, just need to inform your visitors about it and update the privacy policy page which we will cover in the next two steps.
Step: 2 Create An Opt-Out Consent Box
Once MonterInsights got setup successfully, it’s time to create an opt-out consent box because it is one of the rights in CCPA is that users can opt-out from the websites which are sharing their personal data with third-party.
There are many free as well as paid plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory that you can use to create an opt-out consent box.
I highly recommend you to choose from CookieBot or Cookie Notice for creating opt-out consent box, both are free plugins.
Step: 3 Update Your Privacy Policy
Under the rights of CCPA, California citizens also have the right to be informed about the information you take from them. For this, you will need to update your Privacy policy page.
You will need to clearly mention that this website uses Google Analytics to track traffic and other things, and also mention what kind of information Google Analytics collects about a visitor.
Besides this, you also need to explain the purpose of data you are collecting, how you will use it and whether you are sharing it with the third-party or not.
You also need to explain about the cookies you are using to gather readers information. And also make sure to highlight the process that users can take if they willing to view their stored data and how can it be deleted from your website.
Conclusion
CCPA is enforceable by law from July 1st, 2020 and applied to all the businesses which are providing web services to California residents.
If your business meets the requirements of CCPA and use Google Analytics, then you can use these simple 3 step process to make Google Analytics CCPA Compliant with the help of MonsterInsights.
I hope you found this tutorial helpful if you did then must share it with others.
