{"id":4435,"date":"2026-07-13T16:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4435"},"modified":"2026-07-13T16:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:39:33","slug":"322000-californians-sign-up-to-have-data-brokers-delete-their-personal-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4435","title":{"rendered":"322,000 Californians sign up to have data brokers delete their personal information"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More than 300,000 Californians have demanded that hundreds of data brokers erase information about their locations, finances, health and personal lives as the state\u2019s first-in-the-nation Delete Act requires brokers to start the mandatory process of removing data on Aug. 1.<\/p>\n

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Brokers must start accessing deletion requests within 45 days after Aug. 1, then once they have collected those requests, they have another 45 days to report what data they have purged to the agency \u2014 known as CalPrivacy \u2014 and people who have signed up.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Delete Act: How you can request your personal information be purged by data brokers\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Californians who sign up by Aug. 1 will see their data purged in the first round of deletions, and should start seeing results by late October, the agency said.<\/p>\n

The law, and the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, run by CalPrivacy, allow state residents to have their data removed, via a one-time request, by hundreds of data brokers. Making the request also requires the brokers to purge, and not sell, any of a person\u2019s data it collects in the future.<\/p>\n

The information Californians are asking brokers to erase can be extraordinarily sensitive. Of the nearly 600 data brokers in CalPrivacy\u2019s registry, 110 sell people\u2019s precise locations, the registry shows. More than 40 sell identity data that can include Social Security numbers. Almost 70 sell information on people\u2019s gender identity. Seven sell data related to reproductive health, and six sell information on union membership. Eighteen sell minors\u2019 data \u2014 and CalPrivacy Executive Director Tom Kemp Kemp said children can sign up for deletion using DROP, or parents can do it for them.<\/p>\n

Many of the brokers build \u2014 and sell to advertisers and marketers \u2014 dossiers that are increasingly processed using artificial intelligence to draw conclusions about a person\u2019s interests, family, politics, lifestyle, finances, sexual orientation and health.<\/p>\n

The 322,292 Californians who signed up as of July 1 represent less than 1% of the state\u2019s population, but the California Privacy Protection Agency\u2019s chief expects the number to grow as companies begin purging data and word spreads.<\/p>\n

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About 50 data brokers sell people\u2019s personal data to the federal government, with a similar number selling to state governments. Twenty-seven sell information to police agencies. More than 20 sell data to foreign entities. About 30 sell information to developers of generative artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Brokers grab data when people use a loyalty card at a drugstore, browse the web, post on social media or even get married, including addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and location histories that can reveal where people live, work and travel. Brokers also sell information among themselves, broadening people\u2019s exposure.<\/p>\n

Many data brokers will sell to \u201canyone with a credit card,\u201d including scammers, spammers, fraudsters and identity thieves, Kemp said Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur data is their product, and they don\u2019t sell it back to us,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cThey sell it to other people. We don\u2019t have control or say over who buys it. It\u2019s not healthy to have all our personal information sloshing around. For the bad guys, it\u2019s cheaper and easier for them to use data brokers and buy lists of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kemp urged those who haven\u2019t signed up to take advantage of what he calls \u201cthe great delete button in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will reduce your footprint out there, and you should see less targeted advertising based on your demographics, you will see less text scams and email spams, and you will see, potentially, less attempts to defraud you,\u201d Kemp said. Signing up should also reduce the amount of junk mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, he added.<\/p>\n

Companies whose data collection and sales are covered by other federal and state laws, mostly related to financial services and credit reporting but also including some medical information, are still allowed to collect and sell certain data.<\/p>\n

The program, however, can only reach brokers the state knows about. CalPrivacy said its enforcement division is \u201cactively investigating reports of unregistered data brokers\u201d to help ensure as many companies as possible are purging Californians\u2019 data.\u00a0Kemp could not provide an estimate of the number of data brokers that haven\u2019t registered, but said there are \u201cclearly more than 600.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Since the Delete Act took effect, the agency has reached settlements with data brokers that failed to register, with companies agreeing to pay $35,000 to $55,000 penalties, the agency said.<\/p>\n

DataMasters of Texas, which bought and resold for targeted advertising the personal information of millions of people with Alzheimer\u2019s disease, drug addiction, bladder incontinence and other health conditions, agreed to pay a $45,000 fine and was ordered to stop selling all Californians\u2019 personal information, CalPrivacy said.<\/p>\n

DataMasters did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

The fines appear to be spurring more brokers to register, Kemp said.<\/p>\n

Companies that fail to register but have data requiring them to register also face the same penalties for not deleting information as the brokers that do register, Kemp said. Failing to delete data can net a fine of $200 a day for each person participating in the DROP program whose data is not removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will certainly exercise our right as an agency \u2026 to go and fine companies tens of millions of dollars,\u201d Kemp said.<\/p>\n

Personal data sold by data brokers can be \u201cweaponized\u201d by governments, employers or bad actors, Kemp said. \u201cPeople search\u201d websites can be useful, for example, when someone wants to do a quick background check on a potential dating partner, but they sell \u201cdigital dossiers\u201d that contain someone\u2019s address, email address and phone number, and show their relatives and the relatives\u2019 contact information, Kemp said. The data can help criminals target elderly people through impersonation scams or enable stalkers to track victims, he said.<\/p>\n

Kemp noted that the man who pleaded guilty in shootings last year that killed Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounded another state legislator and his wife, was alleged by the FBI, in a June 15, 2025, filing in Minnesota federal court, to have found their addresses through people-search websites.<\/p>\n

The federal government has bought location data from brokers, Kemp said. In March, FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency had bought \u201ccommercially available information for investigations.\u201d In 2023, Kentucky Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie\u2019s office reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had hired a data broker \u201cto screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, by linking people\u2019s social media posts to personal information like their Social Security number and location data.\u201d According to Washington, D.C., nonprofit the Electronic Privacy Information Center, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, \u201cpurchase extensive personal data on immigrant communities from data brokers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see situations in which people are being tracked to find where immigrants live or where they go to work,\u201d Kemp said.<\/p>\n

Location data can also show if a person has visited an abortion provider or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, potentially giving would-be employers access to highly personal information they could use illegally in hiring decisions, Kemp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do not want anyone with a credit card buying the fact that you visited an abortion clinic,\u201d Kemp said, adding that such information could also be used for blackmail.<\/p>\n

Criminals can get into people\u2019s online accounts without a password by answering, with information bought from data brokers, backup questions like, \u201cWhat high school did you go to?\u201d Kemp said.<\/p>\n

The Delete Act builds on two earlier California privacy measures championed by Alastair Mactaggart, the Bay Area co-founder of Californians for Consumer Privacy: the 2018 California Consumer Privacy Act and the 2020 California Privacy Rights Act, which created CalPrivacy.<\/p>\n

Although hundreds of thousands of Californians have signed up to have their data deleted, more than 30 million have not. Kemp said he believes many people aren\u2019t aware of the program, while some are wary of providing the personal information the agency requires from people who sign up.<\/p>\n

That information does not include driver\u2019s license numbers or Social Security or credit card numbers, and is just the \u201cbare minimum\u201d the agency needs to match participants with broker records, Kemp said.<\/p>\n

Pushing the \u201cdelete button\u201d generally takes six to seven minutes, Kemp said.<\/p>\n

Participants need to verify they\u2019re California residents by entering basic personal information or signing in on the federal government\u2019s website, Login.gov, if they have an account on that site. Creation of a profile comes next, with participants choosing which data to include \u2014 the more data, the more comprehensive the deletion will be, the agency said. Data can include names, birth date, zip code, email addresses, phone numbers and vehicle identification numbers.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s an investment,\u201d Kemp said, \u201cto make yourself more secure.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 300,000 Californians have demanded that data brokers erase information about their locations, finances, health and personal lives under the state’s Delete Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n322,000 Californians sign up to have data brokers delete their personal information - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4435\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"322,000 Californians sign up to have data brokers delete their personal information - 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