Data Brokers Are Hiding Their Opt-Out Pages From Google Search (wired.com)
(Thursday August 14, 2025 @11:30AM (msmash)
from the how-about-that dept.)
- Reference: 0178670204
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/14/0235234/data-brokers-are-hiding-their-opt-out-pages-from-google-search
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/data-brokers-hiding-opt-out-pages-google-search/
Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But [1]good luck finding them . From a report:
> 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 California under the state's Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to request that their information be removed, that it not be sold, or that they get access to it. After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered with the state, we found 35 had code to stop certain pages from showing up in searches.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/data-brokers-hiding-opt-out-pages-google-search/
> 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 California under the state's Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to request that their information be removed, that it not be sold, or that they get access to it. After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered with the state, we found 35 had code to stop certain pages from showing up in searches.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/data-brokers-hiding-opt-out-pages-google-search/
Re: (Score:2)
by Himmy32 ( 650060 )
It's not an inability of the search engines to scrape and index those pages, but that they respect the [1]robots meta tag [mozilla.org].
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/meta/name/robots
Blatant Evil (Score:2)
by Tablizer ( 95088 )
Spank the suckers!
Re: (Score:2)
by blackomegax ( 807080 )
Yes because repeatedly slapping their butts will solve this...
Positive Spin (Score:2)
by walkerp1 ( 523460 )
Looking at this from another angle, it sounds like the data brokers helpfully gathered all of their useful pages in your one-stop shop, robots.txt .
First, shoot all of the data brokers (Score:2)
by 0xG ( 712423 )
Have you seen some of these opt-out pages?
To me, they look like they are just a ruse to collect even more information.
You have to provide so many personal details that are not necessary for the request.
And will they honour the request? LOL
Just ask ChatGPT (Score:3)
> Popular tools like Google and Bing respect the code by excluding pages when responding to users
Companies training LLMs have no such ethics and will happily use everything for training, just ask an LLM in a few months.
Re:Just ask ChatGPT (Score:4, Informative)
It's a shame they didn't look too closely at how Europe handled this stuff, because we have years of case law and regulator rulings that could have headed off this kind of thing before it got started.
In Europe they have to make the information easy to find, and contacting them has to be easy too. An email address for a website is basically mandatory. They still try it on sometimes, but if you go to their privacy policy and search for the @ symbol then 9 times out of 10 it gets you an email address to send your request to.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, the US is so incredible anti-consumer now, that they will not adopt anything that works for consumers. Obviously, this goes back to a broken voter population that understands nothing and that cannot be fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
> Well, the US is so incredible anti-consumer now, that they will not adopt anything that works for consumers. Obviously, this goes back to a broken voter population that understands nothing and that cannot be fixed.
It's the simple fact they've been trained to think of themselves as consumers, not people, that means this won't be easily fixed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They did look at it, so they knew what not to do, because helping the consumer is not the goal.
America has been controlled by corporations for decades, since before WWII really. Their lawyers literally write bills and then give them to congresspeople for introduction and sponsorship, while their lobbyists give them money at the same time.
Unfortunately, Americans have been deliberately undereducated since Reagan was president so that they don't realize that this is being done, let alone understand that it's
Re: (Score:1)
Control by corporations would be the inverse of Fascism. Under Fascism, the government controls corporations. The authority runs in one direction only and nothing escapes it.
And did you know that pretty much every interest group out there, including those that promote your own preferences, also write bills that they give to legislators for introduction, and have lobbyists that give legislators money? That's just representative democracy.
I would agree that there has been deliberate undereducation, but
Re: (Score:2)
It's a two-way street.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[2]https://www.britannica.com/top... [britannica.com]
[3]https://mises.org/mises-wire/r... [mises.org]
[4]https://antiauthoritarianplayb... [substack.com]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Conservative-economic-programs
[3] https://mises.org/mises-wire/rise-economic-fascism-america
[4] https://antiauthoritarianplaybook.substack.com/p/the-authoritarian-drift-of-corporations
Re: (Score:2)
In some way, robot.txt is similar to the evil bit RFC:
[1]https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc... [rfc-editor.org]
[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3514
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. I can name some forums and hobbyist sites that are gone because the owner pulled the plug one day and they were never archived.