More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell the personal information of consumers, have hidden their elimination instructions from Google, according to a review of the Markup and the calm of hundreds of broker websites. This creates another obstacle for consumers who want to delete their data.
Many of the pages containing the instructions, listed in an official state register, use the code To tell the search engines TO Remove the page completely from the search results. Popular tools like Google AND Bing Respect the code excluded pages when they respond to users.
National data brokers must register in California under the state Consumer Privacy Actwhich allows the Californians to request that their information will be removed, that they are not sold or have access to it.
After examining the websites of all 499 data brokers registered With the state, we discovered that 35 had the code to prevent some pages from showing off in research.
While these companies could satisfy the letter of the law by providing a page that consumers can use to delete their data, it means little if those consumers cannot find the page, according to Matthew Schwartz, a political analyst of consumer reports that studies the law of California that governs data brokers and other privacy issues.
“This seems to me to be an intelligent job to make it as difficult as possible for consumers,” Schwartz said.
After the markup and the calm contacted the data brokers, seven said they reviewed the code on their websites or to remove it completely, and two others said they had independently eliminated the code before being contacted. The Markup and the calm confirmed eight of the nine companies removed the code.
Two companies said they intentionally added the code to avoid spam on the recommendation of experts and would not change it. The other 24 companies did not respond to a comment request; However, three removed the code after the Markup and the calm contacted.
(See the data on our Github Repo.
Most of the companies that responded have declared that they were not aware that the code was on their pages.
“The presence of the [code] On our opt-out page it was actually supervision and unintentional, “said May Haddad, spokesman for the Quarthwall data company, in an e-mail response.” Our team promptly corrected the problem after being informed. As a standard practice, all critical pages, including opt-out and privacy pages, are intended to be indexed by default to ensure maximum visibility and accessibility. “The Markup and Calmatters confirmed that the code had been removed on 31 July.
Some companies that hid their privacy instructions from search engines included a small connection in the lower part of their homepage. Access often required the sliding of multiple screens, rejecting pop-ups for authorizations for cookies and newsletter recordings, therefore finding a connection that was a fraction of the size of other text on the page.
So consumers still faced a serious obstacle when they try to delete their information.
Take the simple form of opt-out For ipapiA service offered by Kloudend who finds the physical positions of internet visitors based on their IP addresses. People can go to the company’s website to request the company “do not sell” their personal data or to invoke their “right to delete them”, but they would have had difficulty finding the form, since it contained a code excluded from the search results. A Kloudend spokesman described the code as a “supervision” and said the page had been modified to be visible to search engines; The Markup and Calmatters confirmed that the code had been removed on 31 July.
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