Current:Home > MarketsImagine making shadowy data brokers erase your personal info. Californians may soon live the dream-DB Wealth Institute B2 Reviews & Ratings
Imagine making shadowy data brokers erase your personal info. Californians may soon live the dream
lotradecoin insights View Date:2024-12-25 16:48:05
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — You may not know it, but thousands of often shadowy companies routinely traffic in personal data you probably never agreed to share — everything from your real-time location information to private financial details. Even if you could identify these data brokers, there isn’t much you can do about their activities, even in California, which has some of the strongest digital privacy laws in the U.S.
That’s on the verge of changing. Both houses of the California state legislature have passed the Delete Act, which would establish a “one stop shop” where individuals could order hundreds of data brokers registered in the state to delete their personal data — and to cease acquiring and selling it in the future — with a single request.
The Delete Act isn’t law yet; it still needs to pass a second vote in the state Senate, after which its fate is up to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who hasn’t said whether he’ll sign it. But if enacted, its impact could extend well beyond state lines given California’s history of setting trends of this sort.
Here’s what you need to know.
WHAT THE BILL DOES
While California law already gives individuals the right to request data deletion, doing so currently require making separate requests to hundreds of data brokers registered in the state, many with their own unique requirements for drafting and handling such requests. Even then, nothing stops these companies from simply reacquiring that data once they delete it.
The Delete Act would require the state’s new privacy office, the California Privacy Protection Agency, to set up a website where consumers can verify their identity and then make a single request to delete their personal data held by data brokers and to opt out of future tracking. Proponents call it a “do not track” signal similar to the “do not call” list for telemarketers maintained by the Federal Trade Commission.
California already regulates data brokers, but the Delete Act would strengthen those provisions by requiring the companies to disclose more information about the data they collect on consumers and beefing up the state’s enforcement mechanisms.
MEET THE DATA BROKERS
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit focused on bolstering the right to privacy, defines data brokers as companies that collect and categorize personal information, usually to build profiles on millions of Americans that the companies can then rent, sell or use to provide services. The data they collect, per EPIC, can include: “names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, gender, age, marital status, children, education, profession, income, political preferences, and cars and real estate owned.”
That’s not to mention “information on an individual’s purchases, where they shop, and how they pay for their purchases,” plus “health information, the sites we visit online, and the advertisements we click on. And thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and wearables, data brokers collect and sell real-time location data.”
Privacy advocates have warned for years that location and seemingly non-specific personal data — often collected by advertisers and amassed and sold by brokers — can be used to identify individuals. They also charge that the data often isn’t well secured and that the brokers aren’t covered by laws that require the clear consent of the person being tracked. They’ve argued for both legal and technical protections so that consumers can push back.
ARE DATA BROKERS THAT BAD?
Data brokers say they get a bad rap for serving a vital need. The president of the Consumer Data Industry Association, which describes itself as “the voice of the consumer reporting industry,” called the Delete Act “severely flawed” and warned in a Wednesday release that it could lead to unintended consequences by undermining consumer fraud protections, hurting the competitiveness of small businesses and entrenching big platforms such as Facebook and Google that collect vast amounts of consumer data but don’t sell it.
That CDIA official, Dan Smith, also argued that the heart of the bill — the one-stop data deletion program — could potentially allow malicious outsiders to impersonate consumers and delete their data without permission, although he didn’t explain what a third party might have to gain by deleting a consumer’s data without permission. (The Delete Act specifically exempts credit reporting agencies such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, whose reports are often required for big-ticket consumer purchases such as homes or cars.)
The CDIA did not immediately reply to a request for clarification.
WHAT ABUSE OF DATA BROKER INFORMATION LOOKS LIKE
In other respects, though, the information collected by these companies can be startlingly easy to abuse. The general lack of U.S. restrictions on what brokers can do with the vast amount of data they collect means there’s aren’t many legal protections to prevent outsiders from spying on politicians, celebrities and just about anyone that’s a target of idle curiosity — or malice.
Back in mid-2021, for instance, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced the resignation of its top administrative official, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, ahead of a report by the Catholic news outlet The Pillar that probed his private romantic life. The Pillar said it obtained “commercially available” location data from a vendor it didn’t name that it “correlated” to Burrill’s phone to determine that he had visited gay bars and private residences while using Grindr, a dating app popular with gay people.
The Pillar alleged “serial sexual misconduct” by Burrill, as homosexual activity is considered sinful under Catholic doctrine and priests are expected to remain celibate. Following an extended leave, Burrill has since resumed his ministry in the small town of West Salem, Wisconsin, according to the Catholic News Service.
veryGood! (9882)
Related
- Conservative are pushing a ‘parental rights’ agenda in Florida school board races. But will it work?
- All 32 NHL teams are in action Tuesday. Times, TV, streaming, best games
- Trump and Michael Cohen come face to face at New York fraud trial
- Counting down the NBA's top 30 players for 2023-24 season: Nos. 15-1
- Giants trading Jordan Phillips to Cowboys in rare deal between NFC East rivals
- Police in Massachusetts are searching for an armed man in connection with his wife’s shooting death
- NFL power rankings Week 8: How far do 49ers, Lions fall after latest stumbles?
- A man shot himself as Georgia officers tried to question him about 4 jail escapees. He turned out to be a long-missing murder suspect.
- Hurricane Ernesto aims for Bermuda after leaving many in Puerto Rico without power or water
- States sue Meta claiming its social platforms are addictive and harming children’s mental health
Ranking
- Traveling? Here Are the Best Life-Saving Travel Accessories You Need To Pack, Starting at Just $7
- Storm Norma weakens after dropping heavy rain on Mexico, as Hurricane Tammy makes landfall in Barbuda
- Jennifer Lopez's Intimissimi Lingerie Collection Will Have Jaws on the Floor
- Blink-182 announces 2024 tour dates in 30 cities across North America: See the list
- Meta kills off misinformation tracking tool CrowdTangle despite pleas from researchers, journalists
- Kelly Ripa Shares Glimpse Inside Mother-Daughter Trip to London With Lola Consuelos
- Reno man convicted of arsons linked to pattern of domestic violence, police say
- U.S. sending U.S. carrier strike group, additional air defense systems to Persian Gulf
Recommendation
-
Streamer stayed awake for 12 days straight to break a world record that doesn't exist
-
Alaska Airlines flight diverted, off-duty pilot Joseph Emerson arrested for trying to cut engines midflight, officials say
-
The 1st major snowstorm of the season is expected to hit the northern Rockies after a warm fall
-
Prince William to travel to Singapore for Earthshot Prize announcement on climate projects
-
Giants trading Jordan Phillips to Cowboys in rare deal between NFC East rivals
-
Man stopped in August outside Michigan governor’s summer mansion worked for anti-Democrat PAC
-
Everything John Stamos Revealed About Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen in His New Memoir
-
Liberian president Weah to face opponent Boakai for 2nd time in runoff vote
Tags
-
lotradecoin fiat currency support
lotradecoin affiliate program details
lotradecoin knowledgebase
lotradecoin pricing
lotradecoin trading competition updates
lotradecoin fiat-to-crypto conversion rates
lotradecoin instant crypto swaps
lotradecoin affiliate program details
lotradecoin trading system reliability