What they're not telling you: # The Data Deletion Scheme: How California's Tech Companies Deliberately Hid Consumer Rights California law guaranteed residents the right to delete their personal data from corporate databases, but dozens of data investigation-congress-finds-data-brokers-cost-consumers-tens-o.html" title="Following Markup investigation, Congress finds data brokers cost consumers tens of billions of dollars" style="color:#1a1a1a;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-style:dotted;font-weight:500;">following-markup-investigation-congress-finds-data-brokers-cost-consumers-tens-o.html" title="Following Markup investigation, Congress finds data brokers cost consumers tens of billions of dollars" style="color:#1a1a1a;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-style:dotted;font-weight:500;">brokers spent years making that right functionally invisible. The Markup and CalMatters discovered in 2025 that thirty-five data brokers had embedded "no-index" code into the web pages where Californians were supposed to request data deletion. This code instructed search engines like Google not to catalog those pages, effectively removing them from public view.
What the Documents Show
A person searching for how to delete their information from a data broker would find nothing. The legal right existed on paper. In practice, it vanished. The mechanism was deliberate. The "no-index" tag—a line of website code—serves no legitimate function for a deletion request page.
Follow the Money
It exists only to obstruct discovery. These companies weren't hiding poorly designed interfaces or burying requests under legitimate navigation structures. They were affirmatively telling search engines: do not let people find this. When The Markup and CalMatters published their findings and reached out to the companies involved, the response was swift. Twelve of the thirty-five brokers immediately removed the obstruction code. That's a critical detail: these corporations dropped the practice the moment external scrutiny became public.
What Else We Know
They didn't argue the code was necessary. They didn't claim misunderstanding. The remaining twenty-three companies continued the practice until further pressure materialized. New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Joint Economic Committee, sent letters to five major brokers—IQVIA Digital, Comscore, Telesign Corporation, 6sense Insights, and one unnamed fifth company. Four of these corporations engaged with the Senate investigation and agreed to make their deletion pages visible in search results. As of The Markup's follow-up review in May 2026, only eight of the original thirty-five companies were still hiding their pages.
Primary Sources
- Source: The Markup
- Category: True Crime
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
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