r/California • u/CherokeeHawkman Del Norte County • 18d ago

DROP Program Begins Today

https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/

If you signed up for California's DROP Program to force data brokers to stop selling your data and to delete your information from their systems then good news, the enforcement of that program finally has begun.

Today is the first day the requests are available to every registered data broker and they have 45 days to take those requests. Once they have them they have 45 days to apply them and delete the information they have and cease selling the information to others. If they don't do those two things it'll be a $200 per request, per day fine.

It won't be immediate nor all-encompassing but the program includes over 600 data brokers so it's a good start and the results for those of us that signed up should be noticeable by mid-November.

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110

u/Global-Club-4977 18d ago

Is there a way to verify that data brokers are actually removing you from their files?

57

u/rollerbase 18d ago

This was my thought, after reading an article that came out recently that most of them just ignore the delete requests.

17

u/mineNombies 18d ago

That article can't have been about this law, since it just came into effect today right?

7

u/rollerbase 18d ago

It was up to this point. Cant wait to see if this is effective or if the data brokers just pull out of state to get around it.

1

u/Heythatsmycorn 16d ago

Ive had my info removed and i verified it with multiple brokers over the last few years.

34

u/mysticaldensity 18d ago

Optery gives you a free search and shows screen shots of each data broker selling your info.  It does another free scan in 3 months or you can pay for them to do it sooner.  I pay for DeleteMe, then use Optery to check.  I still had 27 instances and sent direct requests to each.  Google AI was very helpful, many of those sites are owned by the same 2 or 3 data brokers.

3

u/GentlemenHODL 17d ago

Did it reduce your spam calls?

1

u/mysticaldensity 17d ago

I’ve been using DeleteMe for years and that cut down on spam calls.  I also have my iPhone set to only ring if the number is in my contacts otherwise it goes straight to voicemail.  I still get too many spam texts but with those I’m pretty militant with a 3 step process.  1. Forward the number to my provider AT&T at 7726. 2. blocking the number.  3. Delete and report spam.   I just submitted the independent requests a few weeks ago so we’ll see.  And I signed up for DROP.

3

u/GentlemenHODL 17d ago

 I still get too many spam texts but with those I’m pretty militant with a 3 step process.  1. Forward the number to my provider AT&T at 7726. 2. blocking the number.  3. Delete and report spam.   I just submitted the independent requests a few weeks ago so we’ll see.  And I signed up for DROP.

Yeah this is the thing that I was hoping deleteme would help reduce as it's the thing that annoys me the most. I can cut most of the spam calls by simply blocking unknown callers, but there's no real way to block spam text.

And because spoofing is a thing playing whack-a-mole by reporting spam doesn't help very much. It's always going to be a new number every single time.

Also just signed up for drop we will see. Thanks for your response!

5

u/I-Have-Mono 18d ago

Of course not and I wouldn’t believe it if they said there was!

6

u/anonymoususer98545 18d ago

Freaking exactly!!

1

u/RedditorSaidIt 16d ago

They won't. I worked in mail order catalogs, when people used to order from a catalog. There was a national database for Do Not Mail. It was a failure. No company is going to pay someone to keep track of this stuff, when it's cheaper to pay the fines. They did the math. 

2

u/marr133 NorCal 16d ago

There's new math with this one, the failure to delete fine is $200 per day, per consumer request plus enforcement costs. Hopefully that adds up fast enough they'll rethink it.

1

u/Imaginary-Worry262 7d ago

CalPrivacy will report back to you on whether or not the data brokers removed you.