You didn't sell your data. You just had a Tuesday in Fresno.

How many brokers in my own DROP list operate around data like this?

Instead of claiming that dozens of companies "tracked you today," I took a more conservative approach. I looked for minimum examples in my August 2026 DROP broker list whose publicly described businesses clearly overlap with each data category.

You didn't take a personality test. You didn't download a shady app. You worked, drove, ate lunch, exercised, shopped and watched TV. You lived a Tuesday.

At All Elite Homes, that is the part of modern privacy we think is easiest to underestimate: ordinary life can generate commercially useful information without feeling unusual at all.

This is not your parents' phone book

When I started my own DROP request, I expected California to ask for the digital version of an old phone book: my name, email, ZIP code and phone number.

I did not expect my Mobile Advertising ID, Connected TV ID and vehicle VIN to be part of the conversation.

I am fairly technical, and even I had never spent much time thinking about my television having an advertising identity.

My phone. My television. My car. Those are three places a modern data trail can live.

For our team, the strange-looking MAID, TV ID and VIN fields are actually one of the best teaching moments in DROP because they show how much the definition of personal information has changed.

California got this one right

A data broker is generally a business that gathers and sells consumer information the consumer did not give it directly.

Instead of requiring Californians to identify brokers and submit individual deletion forms one company at a time, DROP centralizes the request.

What we like about DROP at All Elite Homes is straightforward: California gave the consumer one place to issue the instruction instead of making the consumer chase an industry they may not even know exists.

Wait — THAT industry is in the data-broker ecosystem?

Once I opened the broker list attached to my request, the size of the ecosystem became much more tangible.

The lesson we take from the broker list is not that every familiar company should be treated like a villain. It is that the data economy reaches far more industries than most consumers probably picture when they hear the words "data broker."

Real estate agents are major customers for consumer information

Real estate agents are constantly sold buyer leads, seller leads, homeowner databases, phone numbers, "likely movers," investor prospects, appointments, property intelligence and referral opportunities.

Consumers are being marketed to. Agents are being marketed the consumers.

Earlier in my career I worked Zillow Premier Agent opportunities. The people I spoke with generally understood that their action meant they were going to communicate with a real estate agent.

I later experienced a referral funnel where I repeatedly reached consumers who seemed confused about why I had their number. The platform continued checking with me for roughly two years to determine whether any eventually became a transaction because a referral fee could potentially be owed.

I have also personally been pitched lead or referral arrangements where the fee could be around 20% of the agent-side commission if the consumer eventually closed. Terms vary by provider; that is not an industry-wide standard.

And yes, I get the calls too. My number is public because I am a real estate agent, and I still receive solicitations asking whether I want to sell property. Sometimes when I ask who the agent, brokerage or actual source is, the person calling will not tell me.

If someone who works inside real estate has trouble figuring out who is behind a solicitation, the average homeowner should not be expected to untangle the system on their own.

If you intentionally want to discuss your own property, you can request a Custom Equity Evaluation directly from All Elite Homes . The important distinction is that you decided when the conversation started.

If you're still deciding whether an agent deserves that information, our guide to choosing a Fresno-area Realtor explains the questions we think consumers should ask first.

Across our team, if DROP makes some forms of cold prospecting harder for the real estate industry, we think that is a fair trade for giving Californians more control over themselves.

DROP is powerful. It is not an internet eraser.

We think recommending DROP responsibly also means being clear about its boundaries. It can meaningfully reduce a category of brokered data without rewriting every public record or every direct business relationship.

Californians do not have to choose between DROP and a commercial service. A reasonable approach is to use the free state mechanism first and then decide whether broader automated cleanup is worth paying for.

From our perspective, the free government option deserves to be understood before a Californian assumes a subscription is the only meaningful way to reduce brokered information.

How to submit a California DROP request

I personally went through this process before publishing this guide.

Our recommendation is simple: use guides like this to understand the process, but use CalPrivacy itself when it is time to actually submit or update the request.

DROP is progress, not the finish line

Going through DROP left me with one larger question:

Why do consumers often discover how valuable their information is only when they try to get it back?

We have spent years clicking "Accept" on privacy policies that most normal people will never read from beginning to end.

I would like to see California keep moving toward disclosures ordinary people can understand before the information changes hands.

Principles such as purpose limitation, data minimization and transparency deserve to remain part of that conversation.

California built something useful. Use it. Improve it. Do not stop here.

For All Elite Homes, supporting DROP does not require pretending California solved digital privacy. It means recognizing a useful consumer tool and wanting the idea to keep improving.

Questions Californians are likely to ask

These are the questions we think matter most before somebody assumes DROP either fixes everything or does nothing.