California DROP: Delete Your Data From 600+ Brokers Free

California Will Now Delete Your Data From 600+ Brokers — For Free. Here’s How.

ABET NEWS – CONSUMER TECH / PRIVACY – AUGUST 10, 2026

Deletion obligations under the state’s DROP platform took effect August 1, 2026. A single free request now reaches every registered data broker in California.

If you’ve ever wondered how your phone number ended up in a scam text list, or why an address you moved out of years ago still shows up in a people-search site, the answer is usually a data broker. California just made it dramatically easier to make them stop.

The state’s Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform (DROP) launched January 1, 2026, letting any California resident submit one free deletion request that reaches every data broker registered in the state — over 600 of them. The catch was timing: brokers weren’t actually required to act on those requests until August 1, 2026, which is the date that just passed.

What changed on August 1

Before this month, signing up for DROP just put your request in a queue. Now the obligations are live:

• Data brokers must log into DROP at least every 45 days and pull the latest list of deletion requests.
• Once a broker matches your information, it has 90 days to delete it — including inferences built from that data.
• Brokers can only skip a deletion if a specific legal exemption applies, and they have to report when that happens.
• This isn’t a one-time cleanup. Because brokers keep collecting new data, the every-45-days cycle repeats indefinitely, so your request stays active going forward.

How DROP protects what you submit

You verify California residency through the state’s identity gateway, then give DROP basic identifying details — name, address, email, phone, birthdate, and optionally a mobile ad ID. That information is hashed immediately: converted into a one-way code that can’t be reversed back into your personal data. Brokers compare their own records against those hashes rather than receiving your raw information directly.

How to submit a request

• Confirm you’re a California resident.
• Verify your identity through the state’s identity gateway or Login.gov.
• Create a profile and choose how much information to share — more detail means brokers are more likely to find and delete your full record.

The whole process is free, run directly by the California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy), and takes a few minutes. You can also submit a request on behalf of a child or an elderly relative.

Where to go

Start a request: consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

Official overview and FAQ: privacy.ca.gov/drop

Registered data broker list: cppa.ca.gov/data_broker_registry

Some things cannot be automated. A kind word. A warm embrace. A healing touch.
Effusion – Healing Touch Remix, featuring Tamar (Clean)

One caveat worth knowing: if brokers currently use your data for personalization, deleting it may mean fewer relevant recommendations and more generic ads. For most people, the trade-off — less spam, fewer scam calls, lower identity-theft exposure — is worth it.

DROP only covers brokers registered with the state of California. If you live elsewhere, or want to be thorough, you’ll still need to submit deletion requests to individual companies directly through their privacy policies.

David Frein

© 2026 Abet News. All rights reserved.

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