Imagine making shadowy data brokers erase your personal info. Californians may soon live the dream
personal data you probably never agreed to share — everything from your real-time location information to private financial details. Even if you could identify these data brokers, there isn't much you can do about their activities, including in California, which has some of the strongest digital privacy laws in the U.S.
That's on the verge of changing. Both houses of the California state Legislature have passed the Delete Act, which would establish a «one stop shop» where individuals could order hundreds of data brokers registered in the state to delete their personal data — and to cease acquiring and selling it in the future — with a single request.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteNorthwestern UniversityKellogg Post Graduate Certificate in Digital MarketingVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Digital TransformationVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Digital Marketing and AnalyticsVisit The Delete Act isn't law yet. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom still has to decide whether to sign the measure, which potentially could extend well beyond state lines given California's history of setting similar trends.
Here's what you need to know.
WHAT THE BILL DOES
While California law already gives individuals the right to request data deletion, doing so currently require making separate requests to hundreds of data brokers registered in the state, many with their own unique requirements for drafting and handling such requests. Even then, nothing stops these companies from simply reacquiring the data after they delete it.
The Delete Act would require the state's new privacy office, the California Privacy Protection
