With DELETE Act, Senators Want a 'Do Not Call' List for Data Brokers
A new bill would establish the equivalent of a do-not-call list for data brokers, the firms that build databases of people and then sell that information to third parties.
The Data Elimination and Limiting Extensive Tracking and Exchange Act—that’s right, the DELETE Act—would compel these companies to respect opt-outs filed by Americans at a site to be maintained and policed by the Federal Trade Commission.
Sponsored by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R.-La.) and Jon Ossoff (D.-Ga.) with Rep. Lori Trahan (D.-Mass.), this legislation announced Thursday would address a systemic problem with data brokers: Since they collect information about people from so many other places, an individual can do almost nothing to stop that collection.
As PCMag’s Sascha Segan wrote almost four years ago in a post calling for a ban on data brokers: "You can't opt out of banks and stores."
On a call with journalists Wednesday, Sen. Ossoff said much the same thing: "We are being treated like products, and data brokers are amassing sensitive personal information about us and making money reselling it."
The DELETE Act wouldn’t abolish the data-brokerage business, but it would require the likes of Experian to register with the FTC and set up their systems to interoperate with an FTC-run data-broker dashboard. The text of the 24-page bill explains what would happen next:
People would be able to submit basic coordinates like "email, phone number, physical address, and any other persistent identifier determined by the Commission to aid in the deletion request" to that site.
The site would secure this data using "reasonable security procedures and practices"—presumably by encrypting it, a basic step data brokers like Equifax have often failed to do.
At least
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