The nation’s strictest privacy law just took effect, to data brokers’ chagrin

[rcjordan]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/data-broker-hoarding-is-rampant-new-law-lets-consumers-fight-back/

[ergophobe]

Wonderful. I'll be doing that once I have some time.

In just a few years, 72% of Americans signed up for the Do Not Call list
https://help.vrbo.com/articles/Connecting-your-software-to-HomeAway

This is harder and it is less immediately annoying (i.e. most of it is happening in the background, invisible to us). And the process is a lot more involved (I would have to do a lot of digging to find VIN numbers for the previous two vehicles and everything before that is long long gone).

Still even without VIN there should be a lot of data that would get deleted based on physical addresses and email addresses.

What percentage of people will do it?

I'm going to guess there is at least a small correlation between the people marketers really want to know about and the people most likely to purge their data. In other words, if 10% of people do it, that decreases the data brokers' data value by more than 10%

PS - I've already forwarded the link to a friend who was busily getting his data deleted last fall. 33yo with 2 kids, wife, house. Prime target

[rcjordan]

>percentage of people will do it?

2%

Tim Mayer once told me that only 2% of Y searchers used advanced search options.  (I morphed that into a blackhat quote that got some traction "2% of the users will do anything you want.")

[ergophobe]

There was an old IBM study that found roughly the same number of users who ever edited a URL directly in the address bar. In fact, I think the actual result was that across thousands of sessions of hundreds of users, they had *never* seen it.

But again, 72% signed up for the DNC List in just a few years. So I think 2% is pessimistic. Delete Me has $40mm in revenue and it is just one among several services. That correlates to about 1% of the population willing to pay roughly $100/yr depending on the plan. If you add up all the services, there must be 2-3% willing to *pay* for this.

[rcjordan]

ergophobe, ever the optimist

[ergophobe]

I try.

I think my default tendency is doom and gloom with respect to the world and optimism with respect to how it will work out for me, but I try to attenuate both of those tendencies to meet a bit in the middle.

I think about this ALL the time though
https://th3core.com/chat/index.php?topic=10307.msg67912
"When viewing through rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like flags"

I love that comment

Also, I think a life spent doing comparatively high-risk mountain activities has conditioned me to look for problems, which is adaptive in genuinely dangerous circumstances and maladaptive at all other times. So I'm working on that too ;-)