What Do Data Brokers Fear the Most?

No, it is not a trick question.

They, and the advertisers that they sell to, need names and profiles. Lots of names and profiles. Millions and millions of them, so they can slice them very finely. Male, 18-20, likes soccer, shops at Walmart, wears Crocs, etc. etc. Really, really fine grain.

And what is the devil to these folks?

Global Opt Out. Three small words that strikes fear in their hearts.

If people can opt out globally to targeted marketing they have nothing to sell. This represents a bit of a problem.

At least in Colorado (and in a few other states), global opt out is becoming the law.

In Colorado, that goes into effect on July 1 of this year.

If you operate a website and you do not honor ONE OF THE APPROVED GLOBAL OPT OUT FLAGS, you are breaking the law and our AG would like to have a few words with you.

Last year the Department of Law accepted nominations for candidates for Universal Opt-Opt Mechanisms or — another acronym — UOOMs.

Remember, you MUST accept one of the APPROVED mechanisms. No dark patterns allowed. That is the whole idea.

For the consumer, you set one flag in your browser of choice and targeted marketing is history.

Of course, the browser makers, at least for now, are making it hard to find. I can’t find it at all in Chrome. In Brave, you have to use this address to get to it:

brave://flags/#brave-global-privacy-control-enabled .

Then you have to search for it on a page with a hundred “experimental” controls on it. Yikes.

At least in Brave, it is enabled by default.

Colorado says it will approve other UOOMs in the future if they meet the requirements of the law.

Be prepared! Need help? Contact us.

Credit: Colorado Attorney General’s Office, here and here. Humorous note: Both of these links originally had tracking mechanisms on them. Been removed!

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