The DELETE Act establishes mandatory registration for data brokers with the FTC and creates a centralized system allowing individuals to request the deletion of their personal data from all registered brokers simultaneously.
Lori Trahan
Representative
MA-3
The DELETE Act establishes federal requirements for data brokers, mandating annual registration with the FTC detailing their data collection practices. It creates a centralized, secure system allowing individuals to submit one request to compel all registered data brokers to delete their personal information. Data brokers must comply with these deletion requests monthly and are subject to ongoing oversight, auditing, and annual fees to fund the system.
The DELETE Act: New Federal System Promises One-Click Data Deletion from All Data Brokers
The Data Elimination and Limiting Extensive Tracking and Exchange Act, or the DELETE Act, is taking aim at the shadowy world of data brokers—those companies that collect and sell your personal information without ever having a direct relationship with you. This bill establishes a massive new federal system designed to give you back control over that data, making it easier than ever to tell these brokers to hit the delete button.
The "Easy Button" for Your Privacy
The core of the DELETE Act is the creation of a centralized deletion system run by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Think of it like a universal unsubscribe button for your personal data. Currently, if you want your data deleted, you might have to track down dozens of brokers—a nearly impossible task. Under this new system, the FTC has one year to develop an online process where you can submit a single request to have all registered data brokers delete your personal information and stop collecting more. You’ll provide basic identifiers like your email or phone number, which the system will automatically scramble (using a secure process called "salt and hash") before sending it out to the brokers.
Making Data Brokers Register and Report
Before the deletion system can work, the FTC needs to know who the data brokers are. The bill requires every data broker to register annually with the FTC, starting 18 months after the law passes. They have to cough up their contact info, explain how people can opt out, and detail the types of data they collect. The FTC will then take this registration information and post it publicly in a machine-readable format—a huge win for transparency. However, the FTC does have the discretion not to post information if they determine it would harm public safety, which is a detail worth watching to ensure that discretion isn't misused to shield bad actors.
The 31-Day Clock Starts Now
Once the system is up and running, the compliance requirements for data brokers are tight. They must check the FTC’s scrambled registry at least once every 31 days. If they find a match for a deletion request, they have another 31 days to delete all the personal information they hold on that individual. They then have to confirm to the FTC exactly how many records they deleted. This means if you submit a request on January 1st, by March 2nd, the brokers should have processed your deletion.
There are only limited exceptions to this deletion rule—mainly for data needed for legal reasons, like a warrant, subpoena, or specific human subjects research. But even then, that retained data can only be used for those specific, allowed purposes, not for marketing or selling.
Who Pays for the Cleanup?
Running a massive federal deletion system isn't free. The bill funds this oversight by requiring data brokers who maintain persistent identifiers to pay an annual subscription fee to the FTC. This fee goes directly back into enforcing this section. Furthermore, every three years, these brokers must pay for an independent third-party audit to confirm they are actually following the deletion rules and give that report directly to the FTC. If a broker fails to register or delete data as required, the FTC can treat it as an unfair or deceptive business practice, using its existing enforcement muscle.
The Bottom Line for Busy People
For the average person aged 25–45 juggling work and life, this bill is a major convenience upgrade. Instead of spending hours trying to track down and contact dozens of different companies to protect your privacy—a task most people simply skip—you get a single, free, federally managed portal. This moves the burden of data protection from the individual consumer to the industry that profits from collecting the data. While the law is federal, it’s important to note that if your state already has a stronger privacy law, that law stays in place, ensuring that this new federal floor of protection doesn’t erase existing, more robust state safeguards.