Why some companies are making it extra difficult to delete your data

By Colin Lecher and Tomas Apodaca | CalMatters

Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But good luck finding them.

More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers’ personal information, hid their deletion instructions from Google, according to a review by The Markup and CalMatters of hundreds of broker websites. This creates one more obstacle for consumers who want to delete their data.

Many of the pages containing the instructions, listed in an official state registry, use code to tell search engines to remove the page entirely from search results. Popular tools like Google and Bing respect the code by excluding pages when responding to users.

Data brokers nationwide must register in Californi