Californians can now use a government website to request that certain companies stop selling their personal information online. The Drop website, which stands for the “Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform”, launched on New Year’s Day as part of a state law aimed at enhancing data privacy.
The Drop tool sends a mass deletion request to 500 data brokers, the term for companies which collect and sell personal information gleaned from public records, phone data, online web browsing and a host of other activities. The information, which can be highly detailed and can be taken without user consent, is widely available for purchase on data brokers’ sites.
California’s Drop program aims to reduce the typically time-consuming and expensive process of individually identifying and contacting data brokers to seek out deletion. Although some private companies offer services to mass-delete personal data, California’s government claims that the platform is the first of its kind in the world.
While Drop is now open to all 40 million residents of California, data brokers do not have to start processing the requests until 1 August. The state touts that the eventual result will be that Californians have greater control over their personal data and fewer messages forced upon them by companies and individuals that purchase their contact information.
“When your data stops getting sold, you’ll have less unwanted texts, calls or emails,” the site states.
Drop emerged from a 2023 privacy law called the Delete Act, which called for creating a single mechanism for residents to seek removal of their data. Californians must verify they live in the state to use the tool, then create a profile and submit a request to the 500 data brokers that are registered in the state.
Data broker firms are part of an opaque, multibillion-dollar industry that hoovers up immense amounts of personal data for sale to businesses, government agencies and sometimes scammers. The information is often used for personalized marketing and targeting potential customers based on their habits.
“If a person signs up for a dating app, a data broker may buy all recent sign ups of that dating app from the app developer and sell the information to a gym that is looking to target potential new customers,” California’s privacy protection agency states as an example.
Privacy advocates have long warned that the trade of such data, which can include home addresses, names of family members, search history, location data and even medical data, opens the door to a wide variety of harms and violations. There has also been concern from rights groups and lawmakers over military and law enforcement’s ability to buy up personal data on US citizens and increase their surveillance powers. In one example from 2021, a series of Muslim prayer apps were partnering with a data broker that sold information including location data to military contractors.
US immigration authorities have also turned to data brokers as a means of gaining information on immigrants targeted for deportation, according to documents obtained by immigration advocacy groups. Internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) emails show that agents were encouraged to use services that get their information from data brokers in their operations.
