California’s privacy regulator has fined SalesIntel Research, a Virginia-based data broker, $36,400 for failing to register with the state’s Data Broker Registry by the 2025 deadline, Gizmodo reported. The penalty does nothing to remove a single phone number, email address or job history from the company’s files.
Background
California requires companies that buy and sell personal information about state residents they have no direct relationship with to register each year on the Data Broker Registry. Registration does not restrict what a broker collects; it makes the broker's existence, and its obligation to accept deletion requests, a matter of public record.
Findings
According to the Gizmodo report, SalesIntel’s own marketing describes a database of more than 200 million professional contacts and 54 million US mobile phone numbers, plus behavioural signals that flag when someone changes jobs, is promoted or moves between industries. These “career-change inferences” are derived data, not information anyone filled in on a form: they are modelled from things like LinkedIn activity, professional email domains and the trails people leave across job boards, then sold to advertisers targeting moments of change [1].
The action, published on 1 September 2026, is described as the eighth in an ongoing enforcement push against brokers operating outside California’s registration system. Besides the $36,400 fine, SalesIntel must publish privacy-rights metrics, connect to the state’s DELETE Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) and process future deletion requests through it. “This ongoing enforcement activity shows that CalPrivacy takes seriously the failure to register by the deadline,” executive director Tom Kemp said [1].
Implications for Mac users
Registration and collection are two different problems. A registered broker is one the state knows about, not one that holds less about a person. A fine of $36,400 is also small next to what a database of this size is built to earn, which is why the remediation terms matter more than the amount. The numbers already in the database stay there unless people file deletion requests, one broker at a time, across the roughly 500 brokers registered in California, plus those still unregistered. DROP is a California right: someone living in Texas, Ohio or Florida sees essentially no change to what brokers hold on them from this action, as Gizmodo notes.
A business-contacts database can look like a low-stakes leak of work details. But a mobile number tied to a name, employer and the moment someone changed jobs is exactly what makes a convincing scam call or phishing message possible: someone who knows a target just started a new role knows that person is expecting unfamiliar messages from colleagues, HR and IT, which is when a fake one is most likely to work.
Recommendations
- If you live in California, use the state’s deletion platform; the Data Broker Registry lists who is registered.
- Elsewhere, look up the largest people-search and B2B data sites and use their opt-out forms directly. It is tedious, and it helps.
- Share less in the first place: a work phone number that isn’t your personal one, and fewer free trials and sign-ups with your main email.
- Treat unexpected messages around a job change with extra suspicion, and confirm requests through a channel you already know.
Relevance to FireAI
Brokers are fed by many sources, and the apps on a person’s own devices are one of them: analytics and advertising code that reports what someone does, where they are and which device they use. On a Mac, that part is something FireAI can show and cut. It asks the first time any app connects to the internet, shows every destination on the world map, lets a user block an app or a single domain for one app, and in Paranoid mode blocks known telemetry outright. FireAI cannot delete what a broker already has; it can reduce what a Mac adds to the pile going forward.
Limitations
Gizmodo’s report does not independently verify SalesIntel’s own marketing claims about the size of its database, so the 200 million and 54 million figures reflect the company’s stated numbers rather than an audited count. The report also does not say how many of those records are duplicate or outdated. DROP’s deletion obligation applies to California residents; the report does not describe SalesIntel’s obligations, if any, toward residents of other states.
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