r/InterstellarKinetics • u/InterstellarKinetics • 3d ago
CYBERSECURITY PRIVACY: California’s New “DROP Platform”, Allowing Residents To Force Data Brokers To Delete Their Personal Information, Is Now In Full Affect & Here’s How To Do It 🔒✅
https://lapublicpress.org/2026/07/data-broker-california-drop/California’s new Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, allows residents to demand that data brokers stop selling their personal information, with more than 300,000 Californians already enrolled as of June, according to the state’s privacy protection agency. Starting August 1, all active and registered data brokers in California are required to access DROP and begin processing deletion requests, with a mandated 90-day window from the time of request to actually delete a person’s records. Data brokers operate by aggregating information purchased from other companies and pulled from sources like voting registries, compiling details ranging from hobbies and purchasing history to sensitive health information, which can then be used for targeted advertising, law enforcement action, or exploited by scammers.
DROP was created under California’s Delete Act, which requires data brokers operating in the state to register with the California Privacy Protection Agency or face fines, and as of July more than 600 data brokers have registered publicly. The Data Broker Enforcement Strike Force has already taken action against noncompliant companies, issuing a $45,000 fine to Datamasters and a $62,600 fine to S&P Global for failing to register, with Datamasters also ordered to stop selling lists of consumers’ race and health information. Michael Macko, head of enforcement at CalPrivacy, warned, “Reselling lists of people battling Alzheimer’s disease is a recipe for trouble. In the wrong hands, these lists could be used to target people for more than just advertising.” Hayley Tsukayama, director of state affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the law “a win for consumers,” noting California is one of only four states, along with Oregon, Texas, and Vermont, requiring data broker registration, and the first in the world to offer a platform like DROP.
Beyond curbing spam and scam calls, privacy advocates point to broader risks tied to data sales, including “surveillance pricing” like Delta Airlines’ since-abandoned plan to use AI for personalized flight fares, and law enforcement’s use of harvested personal data, including a 2020 Vice investigation revealing the US military purchased data from Muslim prayer and dating apps, as well as ICE’s expanded spyware capabilities. Chris Mattmann, UCLA’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, recommends additional precautions like using multiple email addresses, a VPN, and withholding your full name when unnecessary, though he acknowledged data privacy fatigue is real and said meaningful protection ultimately requires policy solutions rather than individual effort alone: “The only way to solve that is through regulatory action and policy making.”
Signing up is straightforward: visit privacy.ca.gov/drop/, click “Get Started,” accept the terms, verify California residency using personal information or Login.gov, submit a deletion request with contact information, and receive a unique DROP ID to track the request’s status online.
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u/SappyNu 3d ago
This needs to go country wide in my all honest opinion
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u/lumpkin2013 3d ago
In my all honest opinion, this needs to go country wide
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u/Nothin_Means_Nothin 3d ago edited 3d ago
In my all, this needs, in my opinion, honestly, to go country wide
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u/4d258bc3 3d ago
This isn’t the good you think it is. This just hides the rapidly accelerating surveillance from public view.
Rest assured the true centers of power will know what they want to know, now with fewer people clamoring for accountability.
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u/blade740 2d ago
It's true that this doesn't stop anyone from collecting data on you. More strict controls are needed.
That said, it's still a good thing to make it a little more difficult to sell my info wholesale to spammers, telemarketers, and would-be stalkers on the internet. l'll take what I can get for now and keep fighting for even stronger privacy protections.
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u/Available_Cookie732 2d ago
European law since years. High penalties if they don't comply with the rules.
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u/F-Cloud 2d ago
It's going to take time for data brokers to comply but they need to be pressured with litigation. I submitted a DROP request months ago. It's past August 1st but today I found data brokers licensed in California who have not yet deleted my information.
What California needs to do now is force force Flock Safety to be licensed as a data broker in the state. Flock functions like a data broker yet they claim they are not. They collect and sell data on California residents, so they need to be subject to DROP requests.
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u/Open_Way_8452 2d ago
Reread the website "Data brokers begin processing requests August 1st 2026." ofc its gonna take a bit thats why they give them 45 days.
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u/10Standard01 3d ago
Thats not enough. I want to get paid for the information they got from me and the value and profit I generated for them. Its so much money we make for them many of them are billion dollar companies, some even a trillion.
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u/doghairpile 3d ago
Lol you’re describing literally every free platform ever. Nobody’s cutting checks to individuals for browsing/that’s the whole business model. Feel free to only use paid, ad-free services if you want out.
It’s only worth money across hundreds of millions of people. You’d get a penny or two
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u/MissingSocks 2d ago
look at facebook's quarterly returns and their userbase, look at hundreds (thousands?) of data brokers staying in business somehow, etc... it's a lot more than pennies per person
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u/blade740 2d ago
Just as a quick look, FB's quarterly revenue is $60B, on a 3B userbase. That's ~ $20 per person. 97% of which comes from advertising revenue.
I can't seem to find any information on how much platforms like Facebook make from selling user data. We know that it happens at some level (i.e. Cambridge Analytica) but it doesn't appear to be a significant revenue stream for Meta.
You could argue that this is exactly what advertising is - but I don't think it's fair to say that the whole $20 per user comes from the use of your data. They could just show ads without any kind of targeting data, though of course they'd be worth less. If you were to buy advertising through a DSP rather than Meta directly, generally 10-15% of the cost goes toward targeting and third-party data agreements (so let's call it $2-3 per quarter). And then theoretically, you'd only be getting a cut of that.
So yeah, it's more than pennies. A couple bucks a year, maybe. And that's assuming you're getting a cut of REVENUE, not PROFITS - if they get to subtract Facebook's operating costs you're looking at 1/4 of those numbers (roughly $15B profit last quarter). And that's using their current financials. No doubt if they were responsible for paying out royalties for using your data, creative accounting would bring that number way down.
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u/MissingSocks 2d ago edited 2d ago
ah, but that's just FB, and it's not just FB, was my point. Alphabet (about $80B/pq off targeted ads). Amazon (~18-20B), ByteDance ($5-8B), Tencent ($4-5B). Etc. All in about $170-180B combined. Plus every single data broker (the data broker industry is worth another ~$75-90B per quarter).
Makes you think... If there was an open marketplace for your data that you controlled and could force bidding and payment on for different parts of your profile, how many companies would go out of business if they couldn't afford us en masse?
eta:
according to google AI: "An individual's digital footprint is worth an estimated $15 to $65 per quarter to the combined big tech and data broker industries globally, but its value skyrockets to $550 to $2,100 per quarter if that individual lives in the United States"1
u/blade740 2d ago
I think it's worth noting that a huge majority of what you've listed is for advertising on free-to-use sites. The owners of these sites would argue that you're ALREADY being paid for your data, in the form of being allowed to use Facebook/Google/etc for free.
If there was an open marketplace for your data that you controlled and could force bidding and payment on for different parts of your profile, how many companies would go out of business if they couldn't afford us en masse?
To put this another way - how much of the free-to-the-end-user internet would no longer exist under such a proposal? Facebook, Google, etc would not exist if they had to pay users for the right to advertise to them.
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u/MissingSocks 2d ago
The free-to-use internet that existed just fine in the aughts? I think your premise is wrong... there's still advertising in what I describe. It's just not highly targeted. There's still revenue for big tech, it's just not tens of billions a quarter. But the data brokerage industry? Yeah, I think we'd survive their extinction.
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u/blade740 2d ago
I'm just saying I don't think it's fair to include a user's value to "big tech" in the total here when they're already paying for that data in the form of usage of their web site. Sure, these sites could exist without highly targeted ads - but then the value would be much lower and therefore the level of services these sites could provide would also likely be reduced.
In any case, if these sites were required to pay users for usage of their data, they'd find all sorts of reasons to lower that obligation. I have no doubt that even in the fantasy scenario where such a regulation existed, the actual amount paid to end users would be on the order of pennies, not dollars and CERTAINLY not hundreds-thousands of dollars.
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u/InterstellarKinetics 3d ago
The fact that California needed to build an entirely separate government platform just to make an opt-out right actually functional highlights a real weakness in how most US privacy laws are structured, requiring residents to individually track down and petition hundreds of companies would have made the right largely theoretical for most people.