How to Remove Your Personal Information From Data Brokers, Free

The California Privacy Protection Agency, also called CalPrivacy, runs a free consumer tool called the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, at privacy.ca.gov/DROP. Per that page, DROP is explicitly free: the agency states it will never charge you to use it. It launched on January 1, 2026, and by the agency's own description, it lets a California resident send one request that reaches every data broker registered with the state at once, more than 600 of them, rather than contacting each one separately.

Using it takes three steps, per privacy.ca.gov/DROP: verify that you're a California resident, create a profile with as much or as little information about yourself as you choose to share, and submit the request. Residency is confirmed through the California Identity Gateway, the state's own identity-verification layer, which lets you enter your information directly or sign in with Login.gov; you don't need to create an account with the Identity Gateway itself, and DROP states it does not retain that verification information.

You can also submit a request for someone else with their permission, such as a parent submitting for a child or a family member submitting for an elderly relative, per the same page's help section. Once you submit, data brokers are required to access DROP and begin processing requests starting August 1, 2026, at least once every 45 days, and the agency notes it can take up to 90 days before you see a status update for a given broker. You can check status later at privacy.ca.gov's DROP status page. None of this requires installing anything or paying a fee.

A separate page, privacy.ca.gov/drop-for-data-brokers, describes the business side of the same system: brokers must create a DROP account, register annually, and pay a registration fee (listed there as $6,000 for brokers, not a cost to consumers) to access the platform and process deletion lists. That fee is what funds the brokers' side of DROP; it is not something a consumer ever pays. A related state bill, AB 883, is noted on that page as tightening the broker processing window to 30 days starting January 1, 2027, down from the current 45.

If you'd rather not search dozens of broker sites and write dozens of emails, UNBROKER is an open-source skill for Nous Research's Hermes Agent, the company's own coding agent, built specifically to automate this job. Nightschool AI is an independent guide site and has not run UNBROKER itself; everything below is a description of what its README, SKILL.md, and published user-guide page state, not a first-hand account.

Per its own documentation, UNBROKER scans broker and people-search sites for a consenting person's exposed information using names, prior addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, then submits opt-out or deletion requests, tiering each broker from fully automated to human-only and taking the highest tier it can clear. The project's README describes roughly 19 curated people-search records plus a live pull from a broader public list, and separately an ingestion of California's own data broker registry, which the README puts at roughly 545 entries. It can also run California's DROP one-shot request directly, covering every registered broker the way the manual DROP steps above do.

To use it, you install it into Hermes Agent with the command hermes skills install official/security/unbroker, then run its setup. Per the SKILL.md, the underlying engine is a small Python command-line tool, run from the skill's own directory rather than through a general code-execution tool, with a setup --auto command that detects what's available and configures itself without asking you questions, followed by a doctor command that reports whether it's ready. An intake step collects the subject's names, prior addresses, and contact details and explicitly requires recorded consent before the engine will plan or take any action; after that, you loop on a next command that returns one action at a time until the run is done.

Before you set it up, read Nightschool AI's build-your-first/hermes-agent guide to get Nous Research's Hermes Agent itself installed and working, and the hermes-agent-skills guide for how skills like this one are structured and why reading a skill's own file before enabling it is worth the few minutes it takes. This is general information about a published open-source project, not legal advice, and both the DROP program and UNBROKER's own feature set can change after this page is written.

Whether you use DROP, write to a broker yourself, or run UNBROKER, the same limits apply. None of these routes touch public records: voter rolls, property records, and court filings stay public regardless of a deletion request, per UNBROKER's own README. None of them remove information from an account you still control yourself, such as a social media profile you set up and still use.

Brokers can also re-list you. People move, get new phone numbers, and show up in new public records that feed broker databases again, so a removal today isn't a permanent guarantee. DROP's own timeline notes that registered brokers must re-check and reprocess deletion lists at least every 45 days, which is the state's way of building ongoing removal into the system rather than treating it as a one-time event; UNBROKER's README describes scheduling its own re-scans for the same reason.

Being hidden from a broker's free public search tier also isn't the same as full deletion. Both the DROP program and UNBROKER's documentation note that a listing taken off a free search can still exist in a broker's paid-tier records. And removing your data can have a side effect you may not want: fewer targeted ads and less personalized content, since that personalization often runs on the same data you're asking brokers to delete.

This page is published by Nightschool AI, an independent learning site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with Nous Research or the California Privacy Protection Agency. Hermes Agent and the UNBROKER skill are Nous Research's own open-source project; DROP is a program run by the California Privacy Protection Agency. Nightschool AI describes both based on their own published documentation and has not run UNBROKER itself, so nothing here is a first-hand report of the tool working as described, only a summary of what its maintainers state.

This page is general information, not legal advice. Privacy laws, the DROP program's rules and timeline, and UNBROKER's own features can all change after this page is written; check each program's own current documentation before you rely on a specific detail here, especially a date, a fee, or a step-by-step instruction.