Data brokers help protect consumers as they interact online in ways consumers are unaware of, creating a safer digital economy behind the scenes. Without the data the bill will help remove from these services with its deletion requirements, fraudsters will have an easier time to commit fraud and harm consumers.

Data brokers provide services to the California government to help administer public benefits and to police fraud in the system. The lack of data caused by the bill’s deletion provisions will hamper the ability of government to serve their constituents.

Political campaigns rely on data broker services to connect with voters and fundraise. The bill’s deletion provisions would result in the loss of those services for California campaigns.

Hospital systems and health care providers that rely on data brokers to identify patients across health systems would lose the ability to resolve patient identity due to the deletion requirements of the bill, lowering the quality of care and driving up costs for health care providers and patients.

The bill’s universal deletion mechanism will remove the fuel that powers the ad-supported products and services that consumers rely on in their daily lives.

These entities depend on data brokers and their services to identify and connect with donors and volunteers outside their existing network. That data will no longer be available because of the bill’s deletion provisions.

The hundreds of companies on the data broker registry use data for very different purposes, often in ways consumes are unaware of. The bill’s blunt deletion instrument fails to inform consumers about the benefits companies provide to them based on data and will cause consumers to unintentionally remove their ability to access services they use every day and expose them to higher risks of fraud and identity theft.

The data broker-provided services that allow these entities to compete, such as marketing and advertising, will disappear due to the bill’s deletion requirements.

By limiting the ability of competitors to effectively enter the marketplace and connect with consumers, due to a lack of data in the marketplace, the bill would benefit “big tech” at the cost of the rest of the economy.

The bill would allow third parties, like pay-for-privacy services and other intermediaries, to send mass deletion requests to data brokers. This would give them undue power to control how their competitors can access data services and offer competing products.