Californians have a powerful new way to stop data brokers from hoarding and selling their personal information, as a newly passed law that is one of the strictest in the country took effect earlier this year.
According to California's privacy agency has more than 500 companies actively scouring all sorts of sources for pieces of information about people, then packaging and storing it for sale to marketers, private investigators and others.
Nonprofit consumer watchdog said In 2024, brokers will target automakers, tech companies, junk food restaurants, device makers and others for financial information, purchases, family situations, food, workouts, travel, entertainment and virtually every other imaginable information belonging to millions of people.
Cleaning up your data just got easier
Two years ago, California's expungement law went into effect. It required data brokers to provide residents with the opportunity to obtain a copy of all data relating to them and to request that such information be deleted. Unfortunately, Consumer Watchdog found that only 1 percent of Californians exercised these rights in the first 12 months after the law took effect. The main reason: Residents were required to submit a separate claim to each broker. With hundreds of companies selling data, this burden was too onerous for most residents.
On January 1, a new law known as DROP (Drop Request and Opt Out Platform) went into effect. DROP allows California residents to register a single request to have their data deleted and have it no longer collected in the future. CalPrivacy then forwards it to all brokers.
