Data broker is California law requires consumers to delete their data. But good luck.
According to comments from Markup and Calmatters, more than 30 companies that collect and sell consumer personal information have hidden their deletion instructions. This creates another obstacle for consumers who want to delete data.
Many pages containing directives, listed in the official status registry, use code to tell search engines to completely remove pages from search results. Popular tools such as Google and Bing exclude pages when responding to users, respecting code.
National data brokers must register in California under the state’s Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to require their information to be deleted, not sell their information, or they can access it.
After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered in the state, we found that 35 codes prevent certain pages from appearing in searches.
While these companies may provide letters that consumers can use to fulfill their law by providing pages that they can use to delete their data, this does not mean that they are almost meaningless if these consumers cannot find the page.
“It sounds like a smart job to me, making it hard for consumers to find it,” Schwartz said.
After the markup and calmer contacted the data broker, seven said they would view the code on their website or delete the code altogether, while two others said they had deleted the code independently before contacting it. Markers and calmers confirmed that eight of the nine companies removed the regulation.
The two companies said they deliberately added the code to avoid expert advice to avoid spam and not change it. The other 24 companies did not respond to requests for comment; however, three deleted the code after tagging and Calmatters contacted them.
(See data in our github repository.)
Most companies that do respond say they don’t know the code is on their page.
“exist [code] On our exit page, it is indeed a supervision, not intentional. As a standard exercise, all key pages, including exit and privacy pages, are intended to be indexed by default to ensure maximum visibility and accessibility. “The mark and calmer confirmed that the regulation had been removed as of July 31.
Some companies that hide search engine privacy notes include a small link at the bottom of their homepage. Accessing it usually involves scrolling multiple screens, unwrapping the pop-up for cookie permissions and newsletter registration, and finding other text-sized links on the page.
Therefore, consumers still face serious obstacles when trying to delete information.
A simple opt-out form for IPAPI with a service provided by Kloudend that finds the physical location of the Internet visitors based on its IP address. People can visit the company’s website and ask the company to “not sell” its personal data or call its “deletion rights”, but they will have a hard time finding the form because it contains code that does not include search results. A Kloudend spokesperson described the code as “supervised” and said the page has been changed to be visible to search engines. Markers and calmers confirmed that the regulation had been removed as of July 31.
