DropWatch

Track whether the data brokers on your California deletion request actually met their deadline, and draft the complaint the moment one doesn't.

Date: 2026-08-27 Form factor: web app Status: Prototype

What it is

DropWatch is a compliance tracker for California's DROP platform, the state's centralized system for requesting that data brokers delete your personal information. You log the brokers tied to your request, and the app tracks each one's 45-day access-and-response clock, flags the ones that missed it, and adds up the penalty they're supposed to owe for missing it. A third tab turns an overdue broker into a complaint you can copy and file.

Who it serves

A California resident who filed a DROP deletion request back in January 2026 and, now that brokers are actually required to act on it, has no easy way to tell which of the 600-plus registered brokers complied and which did nothing. This tool assumes you're willing to check a broker's people-search page yourself and log what you found; it isn't a fully automated opt-out service like DeleteMe or Optery, and it doesn't pretend to be.

Why it could be profitable

The free tier tracks a handful of brokers by hand. A paid tier ($4–6/month) would import the full CPPA registry automatically, send a reminder before each broker's deadline, and auto-file complaints instead of requiring a copy-paste. The math behind the complaint feature is what makes it worth paying for: brokers that miss a deletion request owe $200 per request per day, and most consumers have no idea that clock is even running.

The trigger for this idea is specific and recent: DROP's deletion mandate took effect August 1, 2026, roughly 450,000 Californians had already filed requests through the platform, and more than 600 data brokers are on the hook to act on them. That's a real enforcement window, not a hypothetical one. What's less certain is whether people will track this themselves instead of just paying DeleteMe or Optery to handle the whole thing — those services already run broad opt-outs for $100–200 a year, and neither one currently markets a dedicated DROP compliance clock or complaint generator, which is the gap this fills for now. If they add it, and it wouldn't take much, the standalone version stops being interesting.

Form factor & scope

Lives as a web app. The natural next step is a browser extension or scheduled check that visits a broker's people-search page automatically instead of asking the user to look and report back, but that's out of scope here. This prototype demonstrates the compliance dashboard, the broker directory, and the complaint generator against a curated set of 20 real, CPPA-registered brokers.

How to run it

1. Open index.html in any modern browser. Sample data is embedded in the page as an inline JSON block rather than loaded with fetch, since fetch can't read a local file over file:// in Chromium-based browsers without a server; sample-data.json still ships alongside as the canonical copy of that data.
2. On My brokers, see the 10 tracked brokers sorted by urgency, from overdue down to verified deleted. Click a row to log a check-in ("still appearing" or "verified deleted").
3. Switch to Broker directory to search the full 20-broker list and track one that isn't tracked yet.
4. Switch to File a complaint to see the generated complaint text for every broker that's overdue or still showing your data, with the accrued penalty estimate, and copy it to your clipboard.

What's in this prototype

• A compliance dashboard for 10 tracked brokers, each with a deadline, a status badge, and a days-remaining or days-overdue count computed against the current date.
• A summary bar totaling brokers tracked, brokers verified deleted, brokers needing attention, and total estimated penalty exposure.
• A check-in flow that lets you mark a broker "verified deleted" or "still appearing," which is what moves it into the complaint queue.
• A 20-broker directory (10 tracked, 10 not) drawn from real CPPA-registered data broker names, searchable by name or category.
• A complaint generator that fills in broker name, CPPA-style registration reference, deadline, days overdue, and penalty math into copyable text.
• sample-data.json with all 20 brokers and a fixed DROP submission date; broker names are real, but the request and compliance status attached to each is simulated demo data representing one hypothetical user, not a claim about how these companies have actually behaved.

Roadmap

• Pull the live CPPA broker registry instead of a hand-curated list, since it updates as brokers register and deregister.
• Automate the check-in step by fetching a broker's people-search result instead of asking the user to look and report.
• Email or push reminders a few days before a broker's deadline, and again the day it's missed.
• One-click filing to the CPPA's actual complaint intake instead of copy-paste text.
• Aggregate anonymized compliance data across users to name which brokers are chronically late, which is worth more than any individual complaint.

Sources

• California DROP Mandate Starts Saturday, $200-Per-Day Fines Hit 600-Plus Data Brokers — Tech Times — the August 1, 2026 mandate date, the $200-per-day penalty, the 600+ registered broker count, and the ~450,000 consumer requests filed.
• Deletion obligations under DROP are here! — Privacy Rights Clearinghouse — the 45-day access-and-response cycle brokers must follow once the mandate is live.
• Information for Data Brokers — California Privacy Protection Agency — how DROP and the broker registry work, and who's required to register.
• Best Data Removal Service 2026 — Privacy Insight Solutions — pricing and scope of existing paid opt-out services (DeleteMe, Optery, Kanary, Privacy Bee), used here to gauge how this idea sits next to them.