How SB 362 Can Protect Domestic Violence Victims’ Online Information
[Update October 2023: the California Delete Act aka SB 362 was signed into law on October 10, 2023 by Governor Newsom. My analysis of the law can be found here.]
California Senate Bill 362 (SB 362) — the California Delete Act — would create an online portal for consumers to request that data brokers delete any data they have on the consumer and no longer track them. In my first blog on SB 362, I gave an overview of the bill and how this idea of a “data broker clearinghouse” was proposed by Apple CEO Tim Cook, and how it was based on a bipartisan proposal by Senator Cassidy (Republican) and Jon Ossoff (Democrat). In subsequent blogs, I discussed how SB 362 protects against the weaponization of data by protecting reproductive rights as well as immigrants’ rights. In this blog post, I will discuss how the California Delete Act can help protect domestic violence victims’ online information.
Note: much of my discussion will center around a letter that Senators Amy Klobuchar and Lisa Murkowski sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on this very topic.
Background
In March of 2021, Senators Klobuchar and Murkowski sent a letter to the FTC expressing their significant concern about people-search data brokers. People-search data brokers provide websites that enable searches for information about consumers. The FTC says this of people-search data brokers:
“users can use these products to research corporate executives and competitors, find old friends, look up a potential love interest or neighbor, network, or obtain court records or other information about consumers.”
Some of these data brokers’ websites are designed like a phone directory, allowing you to view consumer data by name, mailing address, phone number, or email address. They can also do reverse phone lookups to map who owns a phone number. But because they also collect data from government records, social media, and commercial sources, the information is much more detailed than a phone book. For example, it can show relationships between family members even though they may not be living at the same address or share the same last name. They will also publish your age.
In addition, even though you may have opted out to be published in a telephone directory or specified in the FTC’s Do Not Call Registry not to be telemarketed to, these sites will still publish your address and phone number.
The Senators noted that because these data brokers collect personal data such as phone numbers, email addresses, and other public information, they could potentially reveal the location and contact information to perpetrators of domestic violence, thus endangering victims.
The Senators wrote in their letter:
“As reports of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking have increased during the pandemic, the threat of the virus has made it even more difficult for victims to find safety and support. While some states have addressed confidentiality programs that allow victims to use a post office box as their legal address, we have serious concerns that third party data brokers play a role in revealing the protected address and providing access to personal information that can lead to continued abuse.”
They then further noted:
“We believe additional measures to protect personal data should be taken to ensure the privacy of victims of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking and to make it easier for them to remove their information from data broker sites.”
As I noted in my book, Containing Big Tech, this ability to remove their information from data broker sites is such a critical need for domestic violence victims, because it also turns out that one in four women are often forced to relocate to a relative’s house for safety reasons. But because people-search data brokers make it easy to see names and addresses of relatives, it becomes, and I quote the two Senators, very “difficult or impossible for victims to safely relocate with relatives.”
California Delete Act Can Help
As the California Judiciary Committee analysis of SB 362 states, it is “largely impractical for a consumer to navigate the systems of the hundreds of data brokers and to submit deletion requests individually to each.” In light that there are hundreds of data brokers registered with California, a domestic violence victim would have to spend hundreds of hours to ensure that their address or location is deleted from data brokers’ databases.
Per the request from the two Senators that it should be “easier” for domestic violence victors “to remove their information from data broker sites,” the California Delete Act delivers exactly that.
SB 362 would create an online portal for consumers to request that data brokers delete any data they have on the consumer and no longer track them. At the end of the day, we are simply talking about creating a simple “one and done” web page that saves consumers the hassle of having to reach out to every data broker and requesting their data get deleted. In the case of domestic violence victims, this would go a very long way in protecting their online information including where they may now be currently residing.