Legal Matters: Collecting Customer ZIP Codes? 
Beware the Legal Risks

A trial court dismissed Pineda's claim that capturing her ZIP code violated the Act, and the Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal on the grounds that while telephone numbers and mailing addresses constitute personal identification information, a ZIP code doesn't because it's not specific to the individual. When the case reached the California Supreme Court, however, the justices reversed the dismissal. They ruled that the Act is violated when a business requests and records a customer's ZIP code during a credit card transaction.