Best Practices for Verifying Identity

If a California consumer makes a request of your business regarding access, deletion, or opt-out, it’s extremely important that you take steps to verify their identity. The last thing you want is to reveal personal information to a fraudster. The California Attorney General’s office has published some guidelines depending on what sort of request comes in.

Right to Know - CategoriesDisclosure of categories tends to be based on fairly general information, so you should maintain a reasonable level of certainty. It is recommended that you cross-reference 2 data points of information provided by the consumer with information you already have on file in order to verify identity.
Right to Know - Specific Information

Disclosing specific information to a non-verified consumer may constitute a fairly serious case of fraud, so it’s important that you adhere to a high level of certainty

The Attorney General recommends that you cross-reference 3 data points of information provided by the consumer with information you already have on file, as well as a signed declaration under penalty of perjury that the requestor is who they say they are. 

Right to Delete

Generally, whether a business needs to maintain a reasonable or high level of certainty regarding deletion depends on the sensitivity of the information. 

For example, personal documents would require a high level of certainty, while browsing history would require a reasonable level of certainty. Even though SimplePart will not be honoring deletion requests because of business purposes, you should check your business's deletion policies as well as those of your other service providers.

Right to Opt-outThe verification system described does not apply to opt-out requests.


TIP: If you do not feel confident that a requestor has adequately verified their identity, you may reject his request so long as you explain to him why and give him another opportunity to submit information. Do not use a social security number, driver’s license number, or any other sort of account number to verify a request.

If you have any questions or need any support with this information, please contact our support team via email at support@simplepart.com or 1-888-843-0425.