California’s one-stop shop for data brokers to delete consumers' data
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What new tool do Californians have for deleting personal data?
a new one-stop shop to ask data brokers to delete your personal information. Well, in California, at least. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.
The 39.4 million people who live in the state of California now have a new tool where they can request that data brokers delete their personal information. That includes their search histories, social security numbers, where they work.
What does the Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform (DROP) entail?
The tool is called the Delete Request and Opt Out platform. It does have an acronym, of course, DROP. It was mandated by a 2023 state law called the Delete Act. Data brokers have until August to start processing these requests. Nicole Turner-Lee, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says it could limit the sale of our information. I think this is one part of a longer trail of ensuring consumer privacy and protection, particularly for residents of the state of California. And honestly, I think if the model works quite well, I've always said that California is its own country. And we may actually learn stuff from this. I mean, I think it's really cleared up. to many people that this has to be done, but I want to really caution people that there's still a lot of information surveillance going on out there, folks.
It doesn't necessarily have to be through a data broker. Sometimes it's through our own government who is using their authority to be able to surveil your data. for whatever reason, when it comes to government application eligibility and other things. We have to continue to wrestle with the fact that without very clear legislation at the national level to avert, you know, data brokers, a lot of those directives have failed over the years. And without a national data privacy standard, you know, California is filling a gap, but we really have a big hole that we need to fill that will protect consumer privacy. Yeah. And I was thinking about this, you know, I don't live in California, but if I did, I have one personal email address that is basically so polluted with junk mail that I've kind of abandoned it.
Yes. And I was wondering if I lived there and registered on this platform, would that make that inbox any better? I mean, it could. I mean, I think part of the challenge is that many people sort of get these things in their email. I want to say I'll use my mother's as an example. One, because they want to write because they're purchasing behaviors online, sort of help in the positioning of recommendations of the next thing they should purchase. My mother is very good at that. Right. And I have to constantly tell her to stop looking at her email and clicking those buttons. On the same token, we also get a tranche of just mail, you know, consumer mail online that is just nonsensical at times. So I want to suggest that you may have a cleaner inbox, but you may not.
Right. Because much of what's embedded in this new directive is your ability to act differently. on your behalf to sort of clean up your inbox, right? And so unless you put in a request for deletion, it's just not going to happen. And you may not necessarily know, you know, what you're requesting as well, because consumers are not, you know, always aware of how information is generated online, particularly when we start to look at third party data brokers who play a very opaque role in our internet history.
How could the Delete Act impact consumer privacy?
Yeah. Yeah. So I guess what other ramifications could there be of our information being less out there, being deleted? Well, I mean, I think, you know, there's a couple of things that I like to think about. Our choice to participate in the online economy, it comes with tradeoffs. You know, the things that we prefer to see in our inboxes come as a result of both cookies and possibly the fact that somebody found you. And it could be via one of these data brokers. But we also have a right to privacy, right? We also have a right to not have our inboxes overloaded. And I think, you know, we make tradeoffs and we give information. And I think the purpose of this particular directive is to limit the bad actors of going deeper into the well of your personal information and really, you know, participating bad decisions that you may make because you're just unaware that this is happening to you.
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