Data Privacy

From the Washington Post: 

California just gave its 40 million residents a permanent delete button for a largely covert part of the personal data economy. On New Year’s Day, a government website opened to let Californians demand more than 500 intermediaries called data brokers wipe their personal information from the data on sale and regularly repeat those deletions in the future:

https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/

This deletion power is available only to California residents, and data brokers don’t have to comply until later this year. It’s still worth signing up for deletions now if you’re in California… So much of your personal information is amassed by so many companies that no individual can control the scope and the potential harm. Empowering yourself against rampant data surveillance requires savvy laws, regulation and enforcement that only governments can undertake.

…Data brokers are hard to avoid. Even in states where people have the legal right to demand companies stop selling or sharing their personal information, you might have to file opt-out requests with hundreds of data brokers. [Past] attempts by some states, including California, to regulate data brokers mostly haven’t worked. [But] in 2023, California amended its consumer protection laws with a unique mandate in U.S. data privacy history: a single website where people could order all data brokers operating in the state to delete their personal information in one fell swoop:

https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB362/2023

Advocates who worked for the California measure, known as the Delete Act, are largely thrilled.

“California has the most advanced approach to data brokers of any state,” said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports. “The Delete Act is a great example of a law that gives meaningful control back to consumers.” …

To start using the data broker deletion website, you must verify that you’re a California resident through a digital identification service. Then you enter basic information including your name and variations of your name, date of birth, email address and phone number. For simplicity… skip for now the request for more complicated information, such as your phone’s unique identification number and your vehicle identification number. Those long strings of digits are one way that data brokers may identify you for targeted advertising or tracking. You can go back later and add or change anything you enter into the broker deletion website, said Tom Kemp, executive director of California’s privacy watchdog, the California Privacy Protection Agency. The privacy agency has help resources and dispute resolution if, for example, you have trouble validating that you’re a California resident…  

Don’t expect anything to happen yet. Data brokers have roughly until the middle of September to act on deletion requests. After that, they face daily fines for each unfilled deletion demand. Data brokers also must regularly comb their records to delete new information from people who previously demanded deletion…

If you choose to delete your information from data brokers with the California website, there should be changes that you notice — and others you might not. Kemp said you should notice a reduction in your data shown by “people search” websites that make information such as your address and relatives’ names available to anyone. Kemp said you should also notice fewer targeted online ads and unsolicited texts and emails from companies you’ve never dealt with.

Data broker deletions won’t scrub everything. Some personal information is considered public, such as voter registration and property records. Information like that has been digitized and compiled online and is largely exempt from deletion requests, in California and elsewhere…

Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/02/delete-information-data-brokers-california/.

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Yours truly went through the process of registering at the new California website. Be prepared for a lengthy and involved process of verifying that you are a California state resident. It is likely to involve a back-and-forth process using your cellphone and email. If your UC email address has tight spam filters that delay getting verification codes, I suggest using your personal email for this process. Your most likely item of verification will be a California driver's license. The process may involve using your cellphone camera to take images of your license on both sides. You may have to use something called login.gov to do the verification which involves setting up an account for using that site. At the end of the entire lengthy process, you will be informed that data deletion will not start until August 1, 2026. The article above says nothing happens until September. What I think that discrepancy means is that in August the state starts sending data deletion requests to the data brokers who, in turn, don't start doing anything until September.