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You can feel powerless when you have no control over your personal data, especially since data brokers who don’t care much about your privacy make billions from buying and selling large amounts of consumer data collected from various sources.
Pretty vague Data broker industry Worthy of appreciation $278 billion It operates in the United States with little regulatory oversight so far. Responsibility for monitoring rampant information collection by data brokers often falls to consumers themselves, and the process of submitting a deletion request is not always the most transparent or straightforward.
However, thanks to California’s deletion law and the newly launched deletion and opt-out request platform, or He fallsCalifornia residents now have access to an online tool that can help them submit an automatic data deletion request to more than 500 data brokers simultaneously. This is a huge privacy win if you’re a California resident because it can help significantly reduce the amount of your personal information that data brokers have to sell and share with other third parties at will. In turn, it also reduces the risk of your personal information being exposed to cybercriminals in a data breach, sold on the dark web or used against you in a phishing attack – all of which can lead to identity theft and other damage in real life.
Although DROP could be a game-changer for California residents’ privacy rights, it is not a magic pill that automatically eliminates all cyber risks. At the very least, I would still recommend it VPN To prevent your ISP from monitoring your browsing habits, a Password manager To ensure that your login credentials remain secure and Antivirus Software to keep your device safe from malware.
What is projection?
In 2023, the California legislature passed a law California expungement lawwhich required California Privacy Agencyor the CPPA, to “establish, by January 1, 2026, an accessible deletion mechanism…that allows a consumer, through a single, verifiable consumer request, to request that each data intermediary that maintains any personal information delete any personal information relating to that consumer that is maintained by the data intermediary, service provider, or associated contractor.”
This deletion mechanism became DROP, which was activated at the beginning of the year. In addition to giving California residents an easy way to submit deletion requests, DROP also requires data brokers to register annually with the CPPA, pay an annual registration fee and process deletion requests every 45 days, beginning August 1, 2026. The status of the deletion requests must then be submitted to the CPPA. Fines are set at $200 per day for failure to register by January 31 of each year, and $200 per day per consumer, plus enforcement costs, for failure to comply with a deletion request. Additionally, data brokers must undergo a third-party audit every three years, starting January 1, 2028.
To take advantage of the service, California residents need access to Drop gateVerify their residency, create a profile and send requests. According to California Code of Regulationsa resident is any individual “who is in the state for other than a temporary or transitional purpose, and… every individual who resides in the state and is outside the state for a temporary or transitional purpose.” In other words, if you live in California, you should be able to use DROP (even if you’re temporarily out of state), but if you’re only visiting California for a short time, you probably won’t.
When you create your profile, you can include any amount of personal information that suits you, including your name, address, email address, date of birth, phone number, and even things like your mobile advertising ID or vehicle identification number. The CPPA advises that the more information you submit, the greater the chances that data brokers will be able to match you against their records, and thus delete your data. Once you enter your information, you can submit your application and Track her condition Using your unique DROP ID. You may update your deletion request at any time with additional or new information.
If a data broker detects a match based on the information you provided with your order, all of your information held by that data broker will be deleted, except for exempt data such as publicly available data or first-party data that you shared directly with the Company.
Why is DROP important?
Data brokers collect and share an alarming amount of data, ranging from relatively low risk to highly sensitive, often without the consumer’s direct consent or knowledge. They collect information such as your name, email address, physical address, date of birth, marital status, household information, IP address, shopping habits, online browsing activity, location history, financial information, Social Security number, and health data.
Brokers obtain this information from various sources, including social media platforms, public registries, Internet service providers that share customer browsing data, online tracking devices and cookies, credit bureaus, GPS data, and apps and services that share user data.
Data brokers then sell all of this data to other entities, such as advertisers, people search sites, other data brokers, debt collectors, political campaigns, recruitment companies, lenders, insurance companies, government agencies, and law enforcement.
A lot of data is distributed in many directions, with a lot of opportunities for data breaches or misuse of personal information. This range of data can potentially be stolen by cybercriminals for identity theft or phishing. Aside from cybercrime, stalkers can use your personal data to find information about specific targets, by law enforcement to take actions without a warrant and by insurance companies to inflate your insurance premiums.
The DROP system allows Californians to force data brokers to delete much of that data, thus significantly reducing the risk of their data being misused. Having all this information floating around is of little benefit to consumers, while it is a goldmine for entities that don’t have your best interests in mind. The DROP program helps Californians tip the scales in their favor.
What about non-California residents?
At this time, a mechanism like DROP is only available to California residents, meaning everyone else in the United States is essentially left with two choices — one that is cumbersome and time-consuming, and the other that could be costly, especially in the long run.
One way is to manually send deletion requests to each data broker individually. With hundreds of data brokers operating in the United States and thousands globally, this manual method can be time-consuming and may ultimately be a futile pursuit, even if only a small portion of those data brokers actually have your data.
Another option is to use a Data removal serviceIt is a paid service that can send data removal requests to data brokers on your behalf. However, these services can Varies in effectivenessMaybe not Covering the full range of data brokers It can get expensive because it requires a long-term commitment. Data removal is an ongoing process because your data may be collected again, so you will need to continue to pay for the data removal service, which may cost a few hundred dollars per year.
By comparison, DROP automatically submits deletion requests to more than 500 data brokers with data on California residents free of charge and on a rolling basis — meaning California residents only have to submit one request, and DROP handles the rest. Until other states follow suit or similar legislation is passed at the federal level, residents of other states are left with decidedly less attractive options.
How a VPN can and can’t help
Using a VPN can help you prevent your ISP from monitoring your online browsing activity and therefore sharing that information with data brokers. In addition, Best VPNs They typically include tracker blocking functionality that can help prevent cookies and other trackers from following you across the web and, in turn, from data brokers collecting that information about your online activity.
A VPN encrypts your Internet traffic while your connection runs through a server in a different location. By doing this, it hides what you do online from your ISP, network administrators, government agencies, and other online snoops – while also hiding Change your IP address To the VPN server you are connected to. This means that the websites and online services you use will log the VPN server’s IP address (and location) instead of your real IP address and location. This can help prevent sites and services from sharing your IP address and location with data brokers.
However, while a VPN is an important privacy tool and can help prevent a certain subset of data from ending up in the hands of data brokers, it cannot stop all data collection. A VPN can’t prevent big tech companies like Google or Meta from collecting and sharing data about your activity on their platforms while you’re logged in. A VPN also can’t prevent you from downloading malware or entering your personal information into a phishing site, even if some offer surface-level malware and virus protection. For more comprehensive online privacy and security, you’ll need to take a comprehensive approach.
Proper electronic hygiene requires more than one tool
Using a VPN, DROP, or data deletion service is great, but each is just one piece of the larger cyber hygiene puzzle. In addition to these tools, you should use a password manager and antivirus software. A password manager can help you create strong, unique passwords for each of your individual online accounts, ensuring you’re better protected from cybercriminals accessing them and stealing your sensitive information. Some password managers include phishing protections, including 1Password, which was recently introduced New anti-phishing feature. An antivirus service can help prevent malware from infecting your computer, thus preventing criminals from accessing your data.
Additionally, I recommend using a secure email provider such as Proton mail, Encrypted messages Like Signal, which is a tracking blocker like Privacy Badgera private web browser such as Mole Browser And a special search engine such as Duck, duck, go. All of these tools can help reduce your digital footprint and reduce the amount of personal data you reveal online, and ultimately what data brokers can collect.
Some of these solutions are free, including some VPNs and Antivirus softwarewhile others are paid services that you can purchase individually or as part of A combined set of tools. A handful of VPN companies, including NordVPN, Surfshark, Proton and ExpressVPNdisplays Bundled privacy and cybersecurity tools As part of their subscription packages, which can be a convenient solution if you don’t mind sticking to one provider.
Whichever route you take, having a full arsenal of privacy and security tools at your disposal is a wise move and an important step in taking back control of your data as it is traded between external entities for their own benefit.