ReportWire

Tag: data brokers

  • California introduces a one-stop shop to delete your online data footprint

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    Californians can now put a stop to their personal data being sold around on an online trading floor, thanks to a new free tool. On January 1, the state launched its Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, shortened to DROP, that allows residents to request to delete all of their personal information online that’s been harvested by data brokers.

    According to the California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy), which was responsible for DROP’s release, it’s a “first of its kind” tool that imposes new restrictions on businesses that hoard and sell personal info that consumers didn’t provide directly. The process requires verifying your California residency before you can send a “single deletion request to every registered data broker in California.”

    On the other end, CalPrivacy will require data brokers to register every year and to process any deletion requests from DROP. Data brokers will also have to report the type of information they collect and share, while also being subject to regular audits that check for compliance. If any data broker is found skirting the requirements, they could face penalties and fines.

    Besides being the first in the country to offer this type of comprehensive tool that deletes online personal data, CalPrivacy said it’s one of four states, including Oregon, Texas and Vermont, to require data broker registration. According to the agency, data brokers will start processing the first deletion requests from DROP starting August 1, 2026.

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    Jackson Chen

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  • Got a store rewards card? It might not be that rewarding – WTOP News

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    If you own a rewards card to a department store or coffee shop, you might not be getting as many deals and freebies as you think.

    Washington Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler speaks with WTOP’s Ralph Fox about surveillance pricing.

    If you own a rewards card to a department store or coffee shop, you might not be getting as many deals and freebies as you think.

    Retail loyalty cards which offer points, promotions, and freebies from stores such as Starbucks, Best Buy or GameStop can track your spending habits and find ways to charge you more, according to a recent exploration by Washington Post reporter Geoffrey Fowler.

    Utilizing California’s consumer privacy law, which allows users to obtain access to their data from companies as well as request their information to be deleted or not sold, Fowler took a look at the information Starbucks had on him from his loyalty card.

    Fowler told WTOP that the request revealed the coffee giant had information on all of his purchases and where he made them, building a dossier of his spending habits and building a profile of him.

    “Starbucks was trying to start a dossier on me and size me up, and ultimately figure out how much I would pay,” Fowler said.

    It even counted how often he opened the app.

    “It said one day last March, I tapped on the app more than 90 times,” Fowler said.

    Fowler discovered that Starbucks was also selling his information to data brokers and that he was rewarded less, even though he spent at Starbucks more often.

    “They call it personalized discounts. You might call it personalized ‘jacked up prices,’” he said.

    Fowler said it’s called “surveillance pricing,” where a company figures out what you are willing to pay and charges you exactly that, noting customers who use a company’s loyalty card or app less often are targeted with more deals to entice them back.

    “The opposite of what you thought was supposed to happen with a reward card was happening,” Fowler said.

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Jeffery Leon

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  • Spotify Would Prefer You Didn’t Sell Your Own Data for Profit

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    Spotify has never been shy about the fact that the massive amount of user data it collects is a major part of its secret sauce, from its user-specific Discover Weekly playlist to the annual event that is Spotify Wrapped. But the company, which does everything it can to lock people into long listening sessions and sells ads based on user data, would really prefer it if you didn’t bottle up that sauce and resell it for your own profit. According to a report from Ars Technica, a set of users did just that to make a little profit, much to the company’s chagrin.

    More than 18,000 Spotify users joined a group called Unwrapped, which set out with the goal of allowing said users to monetize their data by selling it to a third party. They found a buyer on Vana, a startup platform that allows people to sell data to firms building AI models. The idea is that users can get some cash directly by selling sources of data that are largely untapped, including things like private messages from Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram—and, in this case, listening history data from Spotify.

    Through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), the users voted on whether or not to make a sale, with 99.5% of the more than 10,000 voters approving, according to Ars Technica. They ultimately sold off artist preference data pulled from their respective Spotify profiles to a company called Solo AI, which markets itself as an AI-driven music platform. The users reportedly got $55,000 for the pool of data, which was split amongst them and distributed via cryptocurrency tokens. The final profit for each person: about $5.

    If you’re factoring in whatever trouble it takes to collect the data and cash out the crypto, your mileage may vary on whether it was all worth it, but it’s interesting as a proof of concept. Now, whether that concept is good or not is a whole other question. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that selling your own data doesn’t actually do anything to correct the imbalance between the power held by companies that collect and cash in on user data and the users who are being constantly surveilled and monetized, and argues, “Those small checks in exchange for intimate details about you are not a fairer trade than we have now.”

    Spotify also thinks selling your user data is bad, but for totally different reasons. According to Ars, the company told the developers in charge of the Unwrapped project that they were violating Spotfiy’s developer policy, which prohibits the use of Spotify content for machine learning or AI models.  “Spotify honors our users’ privacy rights, including the right of portability,” Spotify’s spokesperson told the publication. “All of our users can receive a copy of their personal data to use as they see fit. That said, UnwrappedData.org is in violation of our Developer Terms, which prohibit the collection, aggregation, and sale of Spotify user data to third parties.”

    Maybe Spotify is just annoyed that users are monetizing their own data when the company has struggled to figure out how to do the same. Per Business Insider, just 11% of the company’s revenue currently comes from its data-driven advertising business, well short of its 20% goal, as it has apparently been unable to crack ways to turn its massive trove of user data into ad placements that ad buyers actually want.

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    AJ Dellinger

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