Last week, Virginia became the second U.S. state to launch its own consumer data protection legislation, known as the Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA). While the broad strokes of the law may be very similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and a host of other state privacy acts under consideration, there are enough minor differences to increase compliance burdens for impacted companies moving forward.

The basic data processing virtues codified in the CDPA should on the surface seem very familiar. “The Virginia law, they’ve taken a pretty similar approach to how we’ve seen [in] other data protection laws in the United States and abroad,” said Steve Stransky, vice chair of privacy and cybersecurity at Thompson Hine. Like the CCPA, the CDPA also requires companies to give notice to consumers about how and why their data is being collected, as well as giving them the opportunity to “opt out” of having their data used to facilitate targeted marketing.