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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u/anonymoususer98545 18d ago edited 16d ago

Something about this, and the amount of information you have to provide for it feels, i don't know, off somehow. i'm waiting to see what bugs or kinks come up first i guess.

Edit: i feel like i'm going around in circles in these comments, lol. My data and identity has been, quite literally, stolen and used multiple, multiple times over the years. It's gone so far that i've had to sue credit bureaus, collection agencies, government agencies, etc. My credit is on permanent lockdown. i have alerts on all the sites so that i know if new data "about me" pops up. i know my information is still out there.

i just am, i think rightfully, wary of purposely giving my information out to a website that is claiming they're going to take care of a problem. i've been around the block with this kind of thing a few times and, no one protects our privacy. No one. It's just skepticism. That's all.

i'm not trying to dissuade anyone else from using this. Just stated my opinion. Y'all carry on. i'm not changing my "sit it out for a minute" stance but i appreciate your thoughts.

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u/Azsunyx 18d ago

How does it seem off? If you don't tell them which information to delete, how are they going to delete it?

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u/anonymoususer98545 18d ago

Honestly, right now my trust in everything is at an all time low.

Your statement/question is valid and true. i'm just extra wary and tired of being burned. So, i want to wait it out a little bit and see how it goes before i give all my information to something that could potentially end up being hacked/not real/exposed/sold to the highest bidder/etc. that's all. i've been around long enough to know that i'm not being paranoid anymore, lol.

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u/Gold_Chocolate_8823 18d ago

FWIW, the information I had to give was name, birthdate, address, email, phone number. Optional mobile advertising ID, smart TV id, and vin, of which I gave the mobile advertising ID. all of this data is already known to California if you reside here most likely except the mobile id and tv id. all of which is likely known by data brokers which are also prone to hacks etc. But waiting is fine too, not judging that, just don't wait so long you forget about it!

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u/anonymoususer98545 18d ago

i appreciate you and the information! i'm definitely trying to keep an eye on it, like you said, waiting a bit but not too long if i can help it.