Abuse survivors live at the mercy of data brokers, except in California

On August 1, Californians will be able to opt out from data brokers forever with one click. But elsewhere in the US, there’s little protection for people who need to keep data like their home address private.

Our thanks to former Fight for the Future intern, Suvina Singal, for originally drafting this piece. It appears now with updates related to California's data broker opt-out program.

On an October evening in 1999, 20-year-old Amy Boyer’s stalker drove up to her office and shot her. When New Hampshire authorities investigated, they found out that he only knew her work address because a data broker had sold it to him. 

A quarter of a century since Boyer’s murder, things have really changed for people being stalked, threatened or abused: namely, data brokers have made it easier than ever to harm them. The business model of these companies is to invade everyone’s privacy by collecting and selling our most sensitive data to literally anyone. Meanwhile, most of us don’t even know that this is happening. 

Today, the data broker industry is larger and more powerful than ever before. Simply googling your name can generate numerous search results pointing to data brokers waiting to sell your private information. This data can include every address we have ever lived at, every phone number we have ever had, the names of the people we are related to, our precise location history, and even our web browsing and purchase history. Such data is ripe for abuse.

Data brokers don’t care who purchases data or why, which is more than troubling for abuse survivors and those vulnerable to abuse. As the murder of Amy Boyer shows, privacy can be a matter of life or death. The importance of privacy for abuse survivors is well recognized. Several federal and state-level efforts to ensure survivors’ privacy already exist. But nearly all lawmakers haven’t caught up with the unregulated, lucrative data broker industry. Existing protections for abuse survivors don’t cover data brokers. 

Having no control over personal, private information is particularly dangerous for people who face domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, or sexual assault. When a home address or phone number is a click away, it’s far too easy for an obsessive ex to use it to stalk or harass you, or for an abusive partner to make threats. Data brokers have even sold the addresses of shelters run by organizations serving those fleeing abuse. These shelters are meant to be safe havens for survivors, but are compromised by brokers for profit. Support workers and organizations that advocate for survivors also face data broker-enabled harm and intimidation. People fleeing and recovering from abuse can’t feel or be safe knowing that there is a whole industry built on betraying them to their abusers. 

The urgent need to stop data brokers becomes undeniable when we take into account just how many individuals in the US are vulnerable to and survive abuse. Each year, millions of people face sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner alone. 

Dealing with data brokers can be expensive, in terms of time, stress, and money. To attempt to guard their privacy, survivors must constantly monitor online search results. There are hundreds of data brokers out there, and their opt-out processes are each individually unique and also often opaque or confusing. Even services that charge a fee to opt a person out of data broker websites can’t keep up with them all. And no service can ensure personal information never goes up online, it can only ask that it be taken down once it’s already posted for all to see. 

Privacy protections can’t continue to be a matter of personal responsibility—there are simply too many data brokers. Thankfully, there’s a legislative solution about to go into effect. Right now, Californians can sign up under a new law to halt data brokers from collecting and selling their data. Starting this August, every data broker will be required to register with the state and respect this Do Not Call-style opt-out list. Through this list, Californians can, with a single click, permanently stop the databases maintained and sold by data brokers from listing their information. This law is a major harm reduction for abuse survivors and anyone whose job or life exposes them to harassment and intimidation. 

There is a federal version of this legislation, called the DELETE Act, which has yet to move in Congress. Endorsed by dozens of civil and human rights organizations, the DELETE Act would give everyone in the US the right to demand that data brokers stop collecting and selling their private information. If passed, this law would end the daily lived realities of data-broker-fueled abuse and intimidation for an untold number of people in the US. 

But, data brokers’ harms are too outrageous for lawmakers to stop with one law. We need to end the data broker industry and the conditions that allowed it to become so abusive. Namely, we need to build a national movement for comprehensive federal data privacy legislation. Strong laws that truly protect our privacy will ensure that businesses like data brokers become a sad relic of our era, and never be a threat to life and safety that the next generation must also endure.