Global Privacy Control: does your site honour the signal

The rule

Global Privacy Control, GPC, is a technical signal. The W3C Global Privacy Control specification defines it as one “transmitted over HTTP and through the DOM, that conveys a person’s request to websites and services to not sell or share their personal information with third parties.” The law gives that signal effect in California.

On its face the statute gives a choice. The regulations remove most of it for websites.

So the signal is not optional in practice for an online business that sells or shares. Where the signal conflicts with a setting the visitor made on the business’s own site, Section 7025(c)(3) says the business still processes the signal as an opt-out. Section 7025(f) describes processing “in a frictionless manner”: no fee, no change to the visitor’s experience, and no notification in response to the signal. The provisions on opt-out preference signals have been operative since 29 March 2023.

The Attorney General’s CCPA page says the same in plain terms. It calls GPC “a ‘stop selling or sharing my data switch’ that is available on some internet browsers” and names a user-enabled global privacy control as an acceptable opt-out method for online businesses, one that must be honored as a valid request to stop the sale or sharing of personal information. Penalties follow the other US-02 provisions: fines of up to $2,663 for each offence or $7,988 for each intentional one, as adjusted from 1 January 2025 under Sections 1798.155(a) and 1798.199.90(a). The Stipulated Final Order the CPPA Board adopted on 27 February 2026 alleged that PlayOn Sports failed to configure its digital properties to recognise and honour opt-out preference signals, and treated each failure to honour a signal as a separate count. PlayOn did not admit liability.

Enforcement has moved from guidance toward testing. On 9 September 2025 the CPPA announced a joint investigative sweep with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado and Connecticut into businesses that may not process opt-out requests made through GPC. From January 2027, a separate law, AB 566, requires browsers operating in California to offer an easy opt-out preference signal setting, which the CPPA’s announcement says will give Californians new privacy options in web browsers, where today only a handful of browsers offer one. That law was not yet in force on 7 October 2026.

What PeekWell checks and how

US-03 is run where the site’s markets include California. It asks one question: when the browser sends the signal, do the advertising trackers that ran without it still run?

The scan is automated. It looks at your public pages with the browser’s privacy signal off and on, and notes which advertising trackers start. If the same trackers start with the signal as without it, that becomes a finding, and what the scan saw is the evidence.

US-02 covers the link. This check is about behaviour, so it needs no link to look for.

The scan has limits, and the report says so. It sees the public pages it visited, and the members area when you give it a sign-in. It does not port-scan, try to get in where it isn’t allowed, run any security test or open addresses nobody linked to. A site that honours the signal later, on its servers, or that passes data to vendors by a route a browser visit can’t see, won’t show that here. It cannot tell whether a signal sent while logged in is applied across a person’s other devices, which was the issue in the Disney matter. It doesn’t read your contracts, and it can’t see what a vendor does with the data it gets. A Passed means the expected behaviour was observed on the pages scanned. It does not say the site complies.

Why it matters for a company

An early one was Sephora, announced by the Attorney General on 24 August 2022. The Attorney General alleged that Sephora did not process opt-out requests sent through user-enabled global privacy controls, and that it had not disclosed that it sold personal information. The Attorney General’s statement said the company did not cure within the 30-day period then available. The settlement was $1.2 million and required Sephora to support the signal and report to the Attorney General.

Healthline followed on 1 July 2025 with a $1.55 million settlement, where the Attorney General alleged data kept going to advertising third parties after consumers opted out, and the release says GPC requests must be honored. The CPPA’s Tractor Supply decision on 30 September 2025 listed GPC in the same sentence as the opt-out mechanism, with a $1,350,000 fine and a requirement to scan its properties for tracking technologies. The Disney settlement of 11 February 2026, for $2.75 million, shows the next stage: the Attorney General said Disney did act on the signal, but only for the specific device, even when the visitor was logged in. The PlayOn Sports order of 27 February 2026 alleged that PlayOn had failed to configure its digital properties to recognise and honour opt-out preference signals; PlayOn did not admit liability.

The facts are testable from outside, the agencies have said they test them, and a fix that works in one place can still leave gaps.

Smaller companies and larger companies

The signal rule has no separate small-business track. It applies to any business that meets the CCPA’s thresholds and sells or shares personal information. A site on a hosted builder can cross the 100,000 consumers-or-households threshold on traffic alone.

In a small company the usual cause is configuration. The cookie banner has Accept and Reject, but nobody wired the banner to read the browser signal. Or a pixel pasted into the theme sits outside the banner tool’s control. We could not confirm a decision against a clearly small business at a regulator’s own page, so the note under the cases says so.

In a larger company the cause is scope. Several teams own tags, the site spans brands and apps, and the signal has to carry from the browser to the tag manager, the server and the vendors. The Disney matter is the example. The signal was honoured for one device and not across the account.

How to fix it

1. Test with the signal on. Use a browser that sends GPC, such as Brave, DuckDuckGo or Firefox with the setting on, or an extension. With the network tab open, load your pages and note which advertising and cross-site requests still fire.
2. Read the signal where decisions are made. On the server, look for the Sec-GPC header with a value of exactly 1. In the page, check navigator.globalPrivacyControl. Pass the result to your consent tool and tag manager.
3. Stop the tags before they load. For a visitor who sent the signal, do not load advertising, retargeting or cross-site tags, and do not pass their data to those vendors. Many consent tools have a GPC option. Switch it on and test, since a setting that exists is not proof it works.
4. Do not make the visitor repeat it. If you process the signal in a frictionless manner, the regulations bar a fee, a changed experience or a notification in response to it. If the visitor’s own settings on your site conflict with the signal, process the signal as the opt-out; you may then tell the visitor and offer a choice to consent.
5. Carry it across the account. For logged-in visitors, store the opt-out against the account as well as the device, since the regulations say that if the consumer is known the signal must also be treated as an opt-out for the consumer, and apply it across your other sites, apps and connected TV products. The Disney settlement turned on that gap.
6. Say it in your policy. Section 1798.135(c)(2) lets a privacy policy include a statement that the business responds to opt-out preference signals. Keep the statement true to what step 3 does.
7. Re-scan. Run a scan again. The finding should clear when the tags that ran without the signal no longer run with it.

if (navigator.globalPrivacyControl === true) {
  // do not load advertising or cross-site tags for this visitor
  // record the opt-out against the visitor's account, if they have one
}

The server header is the more reliable place to decide, because it is there before any tag has loaded. Whether your setup meets the law is a question for your legal adviser. Peeky reports only what it sees.