California lawmakers enacted groundbreaking legislation late Wednesday that allows state residents to compel data brokers to delete their personal information with a button. Privacy advocates have closely monitored the DELETE Act and consider this first-of-its-kind bill highly significant. They believe it could inspire similar laws in other states.
Despite intense lobbying from the data broker and advertising industries, the new regulations were passed. Under the law, California residents can visit a single website to request that over 500 registered data brokers in the state remove their personal information from extensive databases. Additionally, these brokers must delete residents’ data every 45 days.
According to Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst at Consumer Reports, the California Privacy Protection Agency will be responsible for establishing a website where residents can quickly and easily request the deletion of their data, instead of contacting every website they have ever visited or reaching out to each registered data broker individually.
The fierce lobbying effort against the bill underscores its importance. Schwartz noted, “This bill is highly significant and provides a substantial consumer right that many data brokers are reluctant to offer, as it threatens the core of their business.” He emphasized that the industry’s strong opposition to consumers gaining the right to delete their data quickly reveals its lack of transparency regarding consumer choice.
Transparency Market Research predicts that the data broker industry will grow 6.8% between 2022 and 2031, potentially reaching $462.4 billion in 2031.
In a LinkedIn post last month, Chad Engelgau, president of one of the country’s largest data brokerage firms, urged the advertising and marketing industries to vigorously oppose the legislation. Engelgau stated that the DELETE Act could “easily destroy” California’s data-driven economy and “negatively impact” consumers and all entities within the marketing industry. He encouraged Californians to understand the bill’s implications and warned those in the advertising, AdTech, or marketing sectors to mobilize against SB 362, claiming it would harm everyone involved.
Last week, a leader from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) wrote an editorial for the California Business Journal, arguing that the law would “stack the deck against California’s small businesses.” According to Sunder Ramani, leadership council chair for the NFIB, “Instead of the Delete Act, it would be the Delete Small Business Act.” He warned that the legislation opens the door for further manipulation of consumers’ data for identity theft and cements big businesses’ dominant market positions, making it nearly impossible for small businesses to attract new customers.
The battle over California’s legislation may be just the beginning, as other states consider their data laws. Hayley Tsukayama, associate director of legislative activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, expressed hope that other states looking to address data broker issues will consider the DELETE Act as a template.
In June, a bipartisan group of federal legislators introduced their version of the DELETE Act. Like the California legislation, the federal bill would allow individuals to request the systematic deletion of personal data collected by all data brokers and prevent future tracking. This federal legislation would also direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to create an “online dashboard” where Americans can submit a one-time data deletion request that would be sent to all registered data brokers.
Alex Adekola is a proven thought leader in the reputation management industry who has targeted mugshot publishers since 2012. He is the longest-serving reputation and crisis management strategist and has written extensively on crisis management. He is the creator and director of strategy at Incept Technologies.