How to delete your personal data in California

California residents have the strongest data-deletion rights in the country. One free request through the state's DROP platform obliges every registered data broker to delete your information — no other state offers this.

What the CCPA/CPRA gives you

The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act took effect in January 2020 (CPRA amendments January 2023). The broadest consumer privacy law in the country, and the only one paired with a state-run deletion platform.

• The right to delete — ask a business to erase the personal data it holds about you.
• The right to know — ask what data a business has collected and who it shared it with.
• The right to correct — fix inaccurate information, which matters when a broker has you at the wrong address.
• The right to opt out of sale — stop a business selling or sharing your data for targeted advertising.
• The right to portability — get a copy of your data in a usable format.

What to do, in order

1. Use DROP first — it is free and it binds every registered broker. California runs the only centralised deletion platform in the country. One verified request through the state obliges every registered data broker to delete your information, at no cost. Registered brokers have been required to act on those requests since 1 August 2026. Nothing any paid service offers California residents beats starting here.
2. Exercise your right to delete under the CCPA/CPRA. California's California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act took effect in January 2020 (CPRA amendments January 2023) and gives you a statutory right to have covered businesses delete the personal data they hold about you. A request made under the law is not a favour you are asking — the business has a legal obligation to respond within a set window. Say plainly that you are exercising your right to delete under the CCPA/CPRA.
3. Check the state's data broker register. California is one of only four states that requires data brokers to register. The register is public, and it tells you which companies have declared they trade in personal information — including contact details for exercising your rights. It is the closest thing to a definitive list of who to send requests to.
4. Opt out of the highest-impact brokers by hand. A small number of people-search sites account for most of what appears when someone searches your name. Clearing those changes your search results far more than working alphabetically through a long list. Every one of these opt-outs is free, and we publish step-by-step instructions.
5. Use Google's own removal tool. Separately from anything your state offers, Google will consider removing search results that expose your phone number, home address or email. It does not delete the underlying page, but it removes the result that causes most of the practical harm. It is free and takes a few minutes.
6. Close the accounts that keep refilling the databases. Removal is not permanent, and the main reason is that dormant online accounts get breached and re-seed the broker databases you just cleared. Closing old accounts is the part almost nobody does, and it is the difference between cleaning up once and staying clean.
7. Re-check every few months. Brokers rebuild from public records and from each other, so listings reappear. Whatever route you take — state platform, statutory requests, manual opt-outs or a paid service — treat it as maintenance rather than a one-time fix.

Law names and effective dates last checked 2026-07-29. General information about consumer privacy rights, not legal advice.