scenario. You are Chief Privacy Officer for Kenyo, a software company that provides remote customer service solutions for companies located in each of the 50 United States of America. Most of Kenyo’s business is providing a link on their clients’ web sites that a customer can click on to enter into a text conversation with Kenyo’s employees in order to provide support to the sale’s team during off hours (i.e. when they are not open and at the office). All of Kenyo’s employees are located in the country of Kenya.
Kenyo’s main offices are located in American Canyon, which is a city located in California. You came into work this morning to find out that your National Director of Sales had a heart attack and died over the weekend. Normally, when someone dies, a person designated in their Last Will and Testament will open what is called “an Estate” and will collect together the assets of the now deceased individual, pay off any debts and distribute any assets that are left to the people designated in the deceased person’s Will. You now know that you are working with that person. The data that the deceased accumulated during their lifetime can be considered such an asset.
You come to find out that he was extremely active online and had numerous accounts in different online services. It is going to be your job to find out if you can access those accounts now that he has passed away (to collect data owned by Kenyo and/or the deceased). You can’t do this all yourself, so you will be responsible for looking at one company (which I will give you the chance to pick), and your classmates will each get a different company. For your assignment, you need to answer the following:
1. What sorts of data pertaining to the deceased could be held by the company you are investigating?
2. What is their procedure for releasing that data to the Estate of the deceased?
3. Do they have a procedure for releasing data that pertains to the deceased’s employer to that employer?
4. Explain the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA) and whether they have an effect on your analysis. (First, explain those Act’s generally, then whether they have an application to your analysis).
5. Knowing what you know now, would there be any particular procedure that you would use to make it easier for releasing data to the decedent’s estate or to the decedent’s employer? Maybe it would be easier if the employer opened the account, not the individual, for example.
