Why does opting out of one data broker not reach its buyers?
Opportunity
When I submit a deletion request to a data broker, the hundreds of secondary companies that already purchased my data are not required to act. Two arXiv audits published in 2025 and 2026 tested every California-registered data broker and found that secondary resellers go almost entirely untouched by opt-out requests. California's DELETE platform, which brokers must use from August 2026, puts the deletion workflow on first-party brokers but carries no cascade obligation downstream. My data continues circulating through the secondary market after I formally opt out of the source, with no technical or legal mechanism to trace and halt it.
Why it matters
A deletion right that stops at the first seller is not a deletion right.
How I score the opportunity
The Opportunity Score is my own read, not a measurement: how much it hurts, how often it bites, and how little exists to solve it today. Higher means I think it is more worth building.
How much pain it causes when it shows up.
How often people actually run into it.
How little good tooling exists for it today.
More problems worth solving
Why is the software we depend on most the worst to use?
TechWhy do I still own none of the data I generate?
TechWhy can I not get a receipt proving my data was actually deleted?
TechWhy can I not know if what is running matches what my SBOM declared?
TechWhy does every C2PA provenance chain break the moment content hits social media?
TechWhy do my AI-generated tests pass on the bugs they were meant to catch?