Gusto keeps your personal data for as long as it needs to for business and legal purposes, without specifying exact timeframes for most data categories.
This analysis describes what Gusto's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
Without specific retention periods disclosed for sensitive data categories like SSNs and bank account information, users cannot easily assess how long their most sensitive data remains in Gusto's systems.
Interpretive note: Whether criteria-based retention disclosure satisfies CPRA's specific disclosure requirements is subject to ongoing regulatory interpretation by the CPPA.
The updated policy explicitly discloses that Gusto sells or shares personal information (defined under state privacy laws) with third parties including business, advertising, and technology partners. The company describes 'sale' as providing information in exchange for valuable consideration, and 'share' as providing information for cross-context behavioral advertising. This disclosure formalizes practices that may have been permitted under previous language but were not explicitly described. You can opt out of sales or sharing of personal information through the Cookies, Analytics, and Other Tracking Technologies section.
View change record →The updated Privacy Policy now explicitly states it covers retirement account management (401k, SEP IRA, IRA accounts) and adds Stripe alongside Plaid as a third-party service provider that collects financial institution data. The policy restructures how it describes Gusto's role in different contexts: when Gusto acts as a service provider processing payroll or other data on behalf of employers, when it acts as an employer itself, or when it operates as a co-employer under a professional organization (PEO) arrangement, with separate privacy notices applying in each case. The policy introduces a new commitment that de-identified data will not be re-identified except to verify compliance with applicable law. If you connect a bank account through Stripe, that data will be treated under Stripe's Privacy Policy, which you should review separately.
View change record →Previously 'Data Retention After Account Closure' at medium severity with no excerpt; now reframed as general 'Data Retention' at low severity with vague indefinite retention language ('as long as necessary') that is more permissive than explicitly addressing post-closure retention.
View full change record →Your sensitive payroll and financial data may be retained indefinitely for legal or accounting reasons, and the policy does not specify maximum retention periods for specific data types, limiting your ability to anticipate when data will be deleted.
How other platforms handle this
to request that your data be transferred to a third party (data portability)
Your organization may allow you to access and export your data in order to back it up or transfer it to a service outside of Google.
Further, you may take legal actions in relation to any potential breach of your rights regarding the processing of your Personal Information, as well as to lodge complaints before the competent data prot...
"We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including to satisfy legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, and as otherwise required or permitted by law. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process your personal information, and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means.Excerpt from Gusto's Privacy Policy
1) REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: CCPA/CPRA requires businesses to disclose retention periods or the criteria used to determine them for each category of personal information.
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Ad personalization controls removed. Contact scanning added. Advertiser data partnerships quietly dropped. A timeline of every change.
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Without specific retention periods disclosed for sensitive data categories like SSNs and bank account information, users cannot easily assess how long their most sensitive data remains in Gusto's systems.
Your sensitive payroll and financial data may be retained indefinitely for legal or accounting reasons, and the policy does not specify maximum retention periods for specific data types, limiting your ability to anticipate when data will be deleted.
ConductAtlas has identified this type of provision across 290 platforms. See the full comparison.
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