From Consumer Reports
New Open Source Project Automates Data Deletion Requests by Email
By Yael Grauer
Although the CCPA is supposed to make it easy for California residents to opt out of companies sharing or selling their data, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. California residents have come across roadblocks, such as companies lacking links to tell companies “do not sell my data,” even though they’re required to by the law. Beyond that, the process can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
With his friction in mind, James Carney, Joanne Jia, Archana Kulkarni and Cameron Lopez, a team of grad students at UC Berkeley’s School of Information began development on PrivacyBot: a free, open source tool to automate part of the process. PrivacyBot is a capstone project meant to allow people to send requests to have their information deleted from a list of data brokers and people search sites.
PrivacyBot is a 2021 MIMS Final Project.
