"DROP asks you to provide some basic information - your name, email address, phone number, and zip code - so data brokers can find you in their systems. You can submit the form with just this information, but if you'd like a more thorough deletion, you can also provide your mobile advertising IDs from your phones, smart TVs, and vehicles. Including these IDs can help brokers match more of your data, but you have to take the time to collect them."
"Under it and previous laws, data brokers must register with the state and enable consumers to tell brokers to stop tracking them and selling their information. Until now, those instructions had to be delivered to each data broker individually - not an easy feat, given that more than 500 brokers were registered in the state as of the end of last year. Making things even more difficult, some brokers obscured their opt-out forms from search results, as The Markup and CalMatters revealed in August."
DROP launched January 1, 2026, to let California residents send deletion and opt-out instructions to all state-registered data brokers simultaneously. The platform implements requirements of the 2023 Delete Act and builds on prior registration rules that require brokers to register and honor consumer opt-outs. Users can submit basic contact details or provide mobile advertising IDs from phones, smart TVs, and vehicles to improve matching. Hundreds of registered brokers must begin processing DROP requests by August. Previously, opt-outs required contacting each broker individually, a task made harder by more than 500 brokers and some hiding opt-out forms from search results.
Read at CalMatters
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