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Surveillance Capitalism gets a spotlight in California. From American Public Media,

this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Lily Jamali.

Do you ever get the feeling like your digital life is being tracked, your web searches,

all that stuff you buy online? Well, it totally is. There's an entire industry built around

making money off of personal information gathered online. Companies known as data brokers

collect, then sell it to other parties. California tried to tackle this problem a couple of years ago,

giving consumers the right to ask that companies delete their info. But actually doing that

is kind of tedious. Consumers have to make the request one company to time. A bill passed by

California lawmakers this month aims to change that by allowing one request to apply to all data

brokers. The Delete Act, which needs Governor Gavin Newsom's signature to become law, would also

require data brokers to register with the state. For more, we called Jessica Rich, a senior policy

advisor for consumer protection at the law firm, Kelly Dry, who laid out the stakes.

One key concern has been that data brokers operate behind the scenes, collecting and selling data

that consumers without consumers knowing about it. Meanwhile, the data can be used to determine who

gets certain offers and prices, who's labeled a fraud risk, who qualifies for government benefits,

etc. There's also been instances where stalkers have purchased this data to locate their victims.

And so how would the Delete Act, this legislation in California, help consumers who are worried

about their data being used in that way? This will give consumers significant new rights.

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