On September 14, the last day of the 2023 legislative session, the California Senate finally passed Senate Bill 362. The new law, also known as the "Erasure Act," aims to provide consumers in the nation's most populous state with new privacy rights at the expense of the business interests of data brokers. The bill now needs to be signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until October 14 to comply.

The newly approved bill will make life easier for California consumers who want their data removed from online databases. Supporters of the bill say the right to expungement is now "vital," while lawyers and advertisers paint a picture of a decadent, convoluted California digital world.Ashkan Soltani, executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA), said Newsom is expected to sign the bill in due course. The Deletion Act establishes a new "accessible deletion mechanism" that will make it easier and faster to delete consumer information collected by data brokers.Under the new law, the CPPA will be responsible for developing a new system by 2026. The system will enable California residents to make a single data deletion request against all 500 data brokers officially operating in the state. The CPPA also requires enforcement of laws that ensure brokers actually delete customers' personal information every 45 days after receiving a "verified" deletion request.Democratic Senator Josh Becker, who first introduced the "Deletion Act" in the California Senate, has previously said that the bill will fill loopholes in the "California Consumer Privacy Act." Prior to the Deletion Act, consumers had to contact each data broker if they wished to have their data deleted. Becker said the Erasure Act is based on a very simple premise: "Every Californian should be able to control who has access to their personal information and what they can do with it."Becker said data brokers worked "around the clock" to build dossiers containing data on millions of people on reproductive health care, geolocation and more, and even bought the data so they could later "sell it to the highest bidder." Tom Kemp, who advised lawmakers on drafting the bill and is an investor in several data removal companies, said that in "the America of post-abortion rights," selling "very sensitive data" such as reproductive health care or precise geolocation has made things "intolerable" for many people. "Opponents of the expungement bill include representatives from Kelley Drye & Warren Partner. The law firm stressed that the bill would make things more complicated for companies, which would need to invest to comply with these new laws. Advertisers are furious, with executives at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) talking about a plan to "enrich pay-to-remove" services.ANA executive vice president Chris Oswald said the Erasure Act would encourage the mass deletion of data "the lifeblood of California's digital economy" and included "clear and dramatic failures." The Advertiser says that without a "robust data market," Californians will fall victim to more fraud and identity theft because "their identities cannot be verified."