Imagine making shadowy data brokers erase your personal info. Californians may soon live the dream

The Delete Act would require the state's new privacy office, the California Privacy Protection Agency, to set up a website where consumers can verify their identity and then make a single request to delete their personal data held by data brokers and to opt out of future tracking. — AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

SAN FRANCISCO: You may not know it, but thousands of often shadowy companies routinely traffic in personal data you probably never agreed to share – everything from your real-time location information to private financial details. Even if you could identify these data brokers, there isn't much you can do about their activities, including in California, which has some of the strongest digital privacy laws in the US

That's on the verge of changing. Both houses of the California state Legislature have passed the Delete Act, which would establish a "one stop shop” where individuals could order hundreds of data brokers registered in the state to delete their personal data – and to cease acquiring and selling it in the future – with a single request.