california's delete act fines start august 1 — here's what $200/day actually means

the california DELETE Act (SB 362) is not a vague privacy principle. it's a machine with a clock on it.

the DROP portal — Data Rights and Ownership Protection — launched january 1, 2026. data brokers are required to access it every 45 days. beginning august 1, 2026, they must process deletion requests coming through it. non-compliance: $200 per day, per request.

that's 49 days from today.

the part that trips people up is "data broker" — it's broader than most founders realize. under SB 362, a data broker is any business that knowingly collects and sells or shares personal information of consumers with whom it has no direct relationship. that includes data aggregators, lead gen companies, people-search sites, and the long tail of marketing intelligence platforms that resell enrichment data.

if you sold a list once, you may be a data broker under california law. if you buy lists to enrich leads, the brokers selling those lists need to be compliant — and if they're not, you're downstream of a compliance gap.

the practical problem for individuals on the receiving end is that the 40+ data broker sites that hold your information don't sync. submitting a deletion to one doesn't touch the others. and the DROP portal handles institutional compliance — it doesn't automatically submit on your behalf to the 150+ non-broker sites that hold email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, and reverse-lookup records.

the data-removal service we built at BizSuite was designed for this exact gap. $497 one-time + $49/month pulls you off 40+ brokers, submits DROP-compliant deletion requests, and monitors for re-listing because brokers resell to each other within 30-60 days of a fresh deletion. the August 1 enforcement date is not a soft deadline — the CPPA has $200/day fines per request and the infrastructure to enforce them.

if you're a california resident or run a business with california customers, the window for getting clean before enforcement activates is closing: https://getbizsuite.com/data-removal.html

the worst-case scenario isn't a fine you pay once. it's a fine that compounds daily while a broker sits on your deletion request backlog.