Californians now have a stronger tool to prevent data brokers from amassing and selling their personal details, after a newly passed law — among the toughest in the country — went into effect at the start of the year.
According to the California Privacy Protection Agency, more than 500 companies actively comb a variety of sources for fragments of information about people, then compile and store it to sell to advertisers, private investigators, and others.
The nonprofit Consumer Watchdog reported in 2024 that brokers harvest data from automakers, tech firms, fast-food chains, device manufacturers, and others for financial records, purchases, family circumstances, diet and exercise patterns, travel and entertainment habits, and virtually every other imaginable detail about millions of individuals.
Cleaning up your data, simplified
Two years ago, California’s Delete Act went into effect. It required data brokers to give residents a way to obtain all information held about them and to request its deletion. However, Consumer Watchdog found that only 1 percent of Californians used these rights in the first 12 months after the law took effect. A main reason: residents had to submit a separate request to each broker. With hundreds of companies selling data, that task was too burdensome for most people.
On January 1, a new law called DROP (Delete Request and Opt-out Platform) became effective. DROP lets California residents file a single request for their data to be deleted and to be excluded from future collection. CalPrivacy then forwards that request to all brokers.
