For $3, a 'Robot Lawyer' Will Sue Data Brokers That Don't Delete Your Personal and Location Info

In January, a new law gave consumers the power to stop companies collecting their personal information. The law, known as the California Consumer Privacy Act (or the CCPA), can be a powerful tool for privacy, but it comes with a catch: Consumers who want to exercise their CCPA rights must contact every data broker individually, and there are more than a hundred of them. But now they have an easier option. From a report: On Thursday, a startup called DoNotPay unveiled a service it calls Digital Health that automates the data-deletion process. Priced at $3 a month, the service will contact more than 100 data brokers on your behalf and demand they delete your and your family's personal information. It will also show you the types of data the brokers have collected -- such as phone number or location info -- and even initiate legal proceedings if the firms fail to comply. The monthly fee also gives subscribers access to DoNotPay's other automated avenging services, like appealing parking tickets in any city, claiming compensation for poor in-flight Wi-Fi, and Robo Revenge, which sues robocallers.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Not really. There's even less overhead if your company doesn't need to devote development time to obtaining or hardware resources to storing all of that information in the first place. Just imagine how much better products could be without wasting all of that time and energy on quasi-Stasi privacy violation!

I'm sure the data brokers will be okay. They can just go back to pimping their sisters.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Storage isn't expensive, but securing the data and making sure you comply with any relevant laws gets expensive in a hurry. Doing any kind of analysis on it is going to eat up CPU time and even though that's relatively inexpensive these days as well, it's not free either. Judging by the kinds of ads that I tend to see on YouTube videos, it's not worth a damn anyway, because it's almost entirely shit that I have absolutely no interest in seeing. If Google with all its massive data and analytics can't get it

Re:

[U0K]

Google appearing to be useless at utilizing your data to deliver useful ads (they neither do that in my case) does not make that kind of data mining less of a security or privacy issue elsewhere.

court system needs an enima

[Comboman]

What clogs up the court system are wealthy individuals and corporations with an army of lawyers on retainer ready to pounce at the slightest perceived provocation. This is just a way for the rest of us to even the playing field.

Re:

[rho]

I like this idea in general. Quite a lot of legal work is ripe to be automated away with Internet services and machine learning.

A small group of good lawyers nationwide and a gaggle of nerds could empty out law offices across the land, and what a great idea. The thought of thousands and thousands of lawyers holding signs that say "Will Lawyer for food" by the side of the road appeals to me.

Re:

[MasterMonstruwacan]

Yeah, liberals are so litigious, and a huge burden on the court system...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

"An analysis by USA Today published in June 2016 found that over the previous three decades, Donald Trump and his businesses have been involved in 3,500 legal cases in U.S. federal courts and state court"

Re:

[dotancohen]

There's approximately 3650 days in three decades. That's almost a legal case per day average!

Re:

[sinij]

This is just upping the barrier of entry to abuse consumers by collecting invasive private information. This only incontinence large, already established abusers and creates a bunch of overhead for everyone else thinking of abusing consumer privacy.

Fixed that for you.

Re:More liability for small players

[Merk42]

CCPA explicitly does not apply [docusign.com] to "small players"

CCPA essentially applies to any for-profit entity doing business in California that collects, shares, or sells California consumers’ personal data, and:

• Has annual gross revenues in excess of $25 million; or
• Possesses the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices; or
• Earns more than half of its annual revenue from selling consumers’ personal information.

Re:

[dshk]

Practically any profitable i.e.sustainable web site which does not sell goods or services but serves users who use the site for free must have much more than 50 000 users.

So this law applies to even the smallest non-local businesses.

Re:

[Merk42]

If your business makes all of its revenue from more users than double the average US city, your business isn't "small".

Re:

[dshk]

Just think about a public forum with 50 000 registered users. That will not do 25m mentioned in the law., but instead actually it will not do more than 10.000. That is barely profitable, especially if it needs moderation. It cannot be smaller.

Re:

[Merk42]

What public forum would have more than username/password and also be one that collects, shares, or sells California consumers’ personal data?

Unfortunately ...

[fahrbot-bot]

When DoNotPay doesn't delete your personal info, you'll have to hire another robot lawyer to sue them... Then it will just be robot lawyer turtles all the way down.

Re:

[ZaxbyChicken]

I see it now, Teenage Robot Lawyer Turtles

Re:

[PseudoThink]

https://donotpaydonotpay.com/ [donotpaydonotpay.com]

Do I Sense

[theshowmecanuck]

Some irony in the force?

And they just do it?

[ZaxbyChicken]

So you say, "Delete my data," they say, "OK," and you believe them? I dunno, seems like there'd be a conflict of interest here. I wish there were a way to test whether they still had your info, like if you keep getting a certain ad.

Re:

[FirstNoel]

It's tricky... for sure. we get requests to Opt-out. But if you aren't broker 'selling' the data, it also doesn't apply.

and deletion, what about financial audits and archives. There's no time frame for the CCPA, technically if a broker had data from someone in the 60's, they'd still have to report it/delete it...

It's kind of like the wild west at the moment, businesses trying to do anything not to be sued.

Another DoNotPay Slashvertisement

[Powercntrl]

Not sure if they've changed it since the last time I tried the app, but it asks for your bank account information as part of being able to use the app. That was a big ol' pile of "nope", as far as I'm concerned.