Business Record Disclosure

Title 1.81 of Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code deals with business records. Chapter 2 deals with disclosures.

Section 1799.1 provides that no business entity which performs bookkeeping services is allowed to disclose in whole or in part the contents of any record, including the disclosure of information in the record in any composite of information, which is prepared or maintained by the business entity to any person, other than the individual or business entity which is the subject of the record, without the express written consent of individual or business entity. This section does not apply to five specified acts of disclosure.

Section 1799.1a specifies that no person or any employee or agent is allowed to disclose information obtained from a federal or state income tax return or any information obtained from a tax schedule submitted with the return by a consumer in connection with a financial or other business-related transaction unless the disclosure is within any of the five specified actions.

No person or any employee or agent is allowed to dispose of any of the information in a manner in which the identity of the consumer may be determined from the disposed information alone or in combination with other publicly available information.

Section 1799.1b states that any credit card issuer that receives a change of address request, other than for a correction of a typographical error, from a cardholder who orders a replacement credit card within 60 days before or after that request is received is required to send to that cardholder a change of address notification that is addressed to the cardholder at the cardholder’s previous address of record.

If the replacement credit card is requested prior to the effective date of the change of address, the notification is required to be sent within 30 days of the change of address request. If the replacement credit card is requested after the effective date of the change of address, the notification must be sent within 30 days of the request for the replacement credit card.

A credit card issuer or a business entity that provides telephone accounts is not required to send a change of address notification when a change of address request is made in person by a consumer who has presented valid identification, or is made by telephone and the requester has provided a unique alpha-numeric password. The terms “credit account” and “telephone account” are defined.