State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, has introduced legislation building on the DELETE Act, which allows consumers to request the deletion of their data from over 500 third-party data brokers at once.
Josh Becker
His new legislation, Senate Bill 923, would allow consumers to request deletion of their data from certain businesses who are adding third-party data, purchased from data brokers, to consumer profiles, according to a Jan. 30 press release. Under current law, consumers can already request that businesses delete data their organization has collected.
“When you delete your information on the DELETE Act, it goes to 545 registered data brokers, and they all have to delete your information,” Becker said. “This is [for] thousands of other businesses that you want to say, ‘Hey, delete my information, and not only delete information you've collected about me, but delete any other information you have about me.’”
The new legislation would apply to businesses making over $25 million in revenue that operate in California.
The goal of the DELETE Act, as well as supplementary bills like SB 923, is to give people control over their personal information and streamline the request process for deleting it.
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More than 200,000 people have used the DELETE Act service to request that data brokers remove their information, a figure that shows a deep interest in personal privacy among an increasingly online world, Becker said. Californians can access the service at privacy.ca.gov/drop.
“As more and more transactions and more and more happens in the online world, people may want to be engaged in it, but they still want to control their personal information,” he said. “That's really what this effort is.”
“I think it's quite related, because number one … these sort of AI systems are just kind of hoovering up lots of information that's out there,” Becker said. “The less information that's out there on any of us, the better.”
He is anticipating that the bill will face opposition, however.
“The data industry made a strong push against the DELETE act and I'm sure we will see a similar pushback from other online businesses here,” he said.“It’s not going to be any easy one to get through.”
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