Overview
This check runs a default-state audit (zero clicks, no interaction) with the crawl location set to California and confirms that no tag in a wiretap-risk category (session replay, advertising, web analytics, chat software, and related recording-capable tools) fires before the visitor has given affirmative consent.
Note: This guide is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult qualified legal counsel regarding your organization's specific CIPA compliance obligations.
Why it is important
Under CIPA Section 631, routing a user's communications (clicks, keystrokes, page paths) through a third-party vendor before securing explicit consent is litigated as an unauthorized wiretap, independent of whether the vendor is a well-known analytics or advertising provider.
This is a fundamentally different standard from CCPA/GDPR's opt-out model: CIPA demands prior, affirmative opt-in before the recording-capable tag ever touches the visitor's session, so a site that is otherwise CCPA-compliant (opt-out honored correctly) can still be in active CIPA violation if those same tags fire by default before any interaction.
Implementation
Configure an Audit with the Location set to California and no pre-audit consent actions (the default, no-interaction state).
Check the pre-built ObservePoint report for Pages with CIPA Non-Compliance Risk.
Any tag in the report above fired before consent was ever received. Cross-reference its category (session replay, advertising, analytics, chat) against your Session Tracking & Interaction Recording Log to confirm whether it was ever authorized to run in this state at all.
Remediation
For remediation, follow the next steps:
For each tag confirmed firing in the default state, open its trigger configuration in your Tag Management System and gate it behind an explicit opt-in event rather than a bare page-load trigger.
Where the tag is a session-replay or chat tool specifically, treat this as higher urgency than a standard analytics tag, since courts have shown particular willingness to treat unauthorized session recording and chat capture as wiretapping.
Re-run the default-state California audit after remediation and confirm the report returns zero rows before considering the finding closed.
Conclusion
Because CIPA's prior-consent bar is stricter than the opt-out model most other checks in your program are built around, this is usually the first check to fail even on a site with a mature CCPA/GDPR consent program. Schedule it on the same daily high-traffic cadence as your other prior-consent checks, since a single Tag Management System publish can reintroduce a violation overnight.