How many times have you been awakened by a spam call?
“That’s the worst,” said Maria Lewis, “Especially during mornings when I have a day off and I’m trying to sleep in. The calls can be relentless,” she described. “It’s more than a nuisance – it’s an intrusion. I get calls from all kinds of telemarketers who seem to know a lot about me. They know that I own a house and where I live, and try to convince me to let them come to my door for a home improvement appointment.”
Lewis said she’s changed the settings on her phone to filter out spam and worse – calls that sound like fraud, but it hasn’t stopped them. “They’re pushy. I ask them how they got my number, and I tell them to stop calling me, but it doesn’t stop, even after I block them; they just call again using another number.”
In this age of data breaches, technology and algorithms, no matter how much of an effort we make to guard our private information, our phone numbers are leaked, scraped from our public social media profiles, websites, public records and the apps we use and then shared and sold to any entity willing to pay for the information. It’s no wonder we receive so many unsolicited emails and our phones ring every day with spam calls.
California has Highest Protection
But there is good news to report. California, with the strongest and highest consumer protection laws in the country, now has an easier way for residents to take back control of their personal information.
Tom Kemp, Executive Director of California Privacy Protection Agency, said there is now a first-of-its-kind privacy tool called the Delete Request and Opt Out platform (DROP).
“It’s a free tool that was built by Cal Privacy, and it allows Californians to send a single request to more than 575 registered data brokers to delete their personal information and stop its sale.”
The DROP tool said Kemp is subsequent to the Delete Act, a bill authored by State Senator Josh Becker, signed into law by Governor Newsom in 2023, that responded to identity theft and now requires all data brokers to register with the State of California and the Cal Privacy Agency.
“The law required us [Cal Privacy] to build an accessible deletion mechanism which gives each and every one of us basically a single click mechanism to tell these data brokers to ‘stop selling my information, and if you have it, please delete that information now.’ “
Kemp said taking control of your personal information is vital.
“The reality is, data brokers hold very sensitive personal information about each and every one of us, and that information can be used against us. It can include not only our name, our email, our phone number, but our browsing history, what we’ve purchased, sensitive health information and more.”
How to DROP and Secure your Data
The DROP platform is a permanent opt-out that allows the consumer to say ‘delete my information.’ It’s set up to be user-friendly and should take less than 10 minutes to complete.
The first and only step needed is to fill out the requested information on the portal:
privacy.ca.gov or privacy.ca.gov/drop to verify your California residency and to provide basic information.
“The information is stored in a secure manner and we only use it so data brokers can match your information and delete it after you submit your request,” said Kemp.
After completing the form, starting August 1, data brokers must delete your information or they risk paying heavy fines.
“About 300,000 Californians have already signed up, so you can see these data brokers may be on the hook for 50 $60 million a day if they don’t delete it. My agency, Cal Privacy, will enforce it, and we plan to be very active, so there’s a lot of teeth behind this law, and so we expect a high degree of compliance,” said Kemp.
It’s a permanent opt-out, he said; you only have to do this once, so you can take control of your personal information and make sure that it’s not being sold in the future.
“The benefit to Californians will be fewer unwanted calls, fewer spam texts, and a significant reduction in attempts at identity theft and identity fraud. People are very excited, and we’ve already seen other legislators in other states wanting to adopt this.”
We Have Been the Product Sold
Most Californians are still unaware that data brokers even exist. Without our knowledge or permission, these companies collect, buy and sell our personal information.
“They create these big digital dossiers on each and every one of us, and so, in effect, we are their product. Our personal information is the product they sell,” said Kemp.
“Our data is constantly being sold to people and we don’t know who’s buying it, and the problem is with all our data sloshing around that creates a lot of risk.”
The elderly have been especially targeted and vulnerable to fraudulent calls. They often receive an abundance of robocalls, phishing emails and misleading ads that attempt to separate them from their life savings. While there may be some reluctance from seniors to utilize the site, they could especially benefit from using the DROP Portal.
Immigrants may also hesitate to participate. “The federal government, like ICE, is buying data from data brokers as well, and so there’s a lot of concerns with the immigrant community that data can be weaponized against them, so I understand there may be a nervousness, [wondering] if the government is going to sell my information.” But, Kemp said, once you put the information in and hit the submit button, it immediately gets stored in a secure, encrypted manner.
“Every Californian deserves to know that they have control over their own personal information,” said Kemp, who has been on a road trip to let people know throughout the state that they can be protected.
