Where it stands
Checked October 2026Pennsylvania Consumer Data Privacy ActHB 78 · Pennsylvania
In the SenatePassed the House in October 2025; a Senate committee approved it, as amended, in June 2026. It has not had a full Senate vote.[1]
Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale ActH.R. 4639 · 118th Congress
ExpiredPassed the House 219–199 in April 2024, then died in the Senate when that Congress ended. We could not locate a version in the current Congress.[2]
The mechanism
How the broker economy works
Nobody signs up to be profiled. The data arrives anyway — from places you did business, forms you filled out, and code running in the background of apps you installed for something else.
The industry runs in three moves: collect from many sources, aggregate those scraps into a single profile keyed to your name and address, and sell access to that profile on the open market. The same record can be resold hundreds of times, and brokers buy from each other, so a single data point spreads far past wherever it started.
Why we cover this
The broker loophole is a warrant the government never has to ask for.
This page is the companion to the third-party doctrine. That page explains why data you give a company loses Fourth Amendment protection; brokers are what happens next. Because the records are for sale, an agency that would need a warrant to demand your data can often just buy it instead — and the same market is open to a landlord, an abuser, or anyone with a grudge and a credit card.
The lever that already exists
One request, every broker: California’s DELETE Act
The usual advice is to opt out of hundreds of brokers one form at a time. One state built a shortcut — a single request that every registered broker has to honor — and it’s the clearest “close the loophole” win on the board.
The idea: instead of chasing brokers individually, you file once through a state-run platform, and every data broker registered in that state must delete what they hold on you and stop selling it. It ties directly into our Privacy by State map — a handful of states run broker registries at all, and most run none.
State broker registries
Where a broker registry exists at all, you at least have a list to work from. Confirm each before publishing.
California
[Research: confirm the registry, the administering agency, and the DELETE Act deletion mechanism. Link the official registry page.]
Vermont
[Research: confirm Vermont’s data-broker registration law and link the state registry.]
Texas
[Research: confirm Texas’s broker registration requirement and link the registry.]
Oregon
[Research: confirm Oregon’s broker registration law and link the registry.]
Add or drop states as the research turns up. Do not assert a state has a registry until the official page is located and linked.
Getting out
Getting off the lists
The step-by-step — doing the removals yourself, or paying a service to repeat them — is on Deleting accounts.
References2 sources
Every source this page cites, numbered in the order it first appears. Each number in the text links here; each ^ links back.
- ^ Pennsylvania General Assembly, HB 78 (2025–26), Consumer Data Privacy Act, bill history palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/hb78
- ^ Congress.gov, H.R. 4639 (118th Congress), Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4639
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