California’s privacy regulator has fined SalesIntel Research, a Virginia-based data broker, for failing to register with the state’s Data Broker Registry by the 2025 deadline, Gizmodo reported. The penalty is $36,400. The piece, produced by Gizmodo’s deals team, makes a point worth repeating: the fine does nothing to remove a single phone number, email address or job history from the company’s files.
What the company holds
According to the 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: nobody filled them 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 who want to reach people at moments of change.
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 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.
Why the data stays
Registration and collection are two different problems. A registered broker is one the state knows about, not one that holds less about you. 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. And the DROP mechanism is a California right: if you live in Texas, Ohio or Florida, Gizmodo notes, this action changes essentially nothing about what brokers hold on you.
It is tempting to shrug at a business-contacts database: it is only your work details. But a mobile number tied to your name, employer and the moment you changed jobs is exactly what makes a convincing scam call or phishing message possible. Someone who knows you just started a new role knows you are expecting emails from unfamiliar colleagues, HR and IT, and that is when a fake one is most likely to work.
What you can do
- 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. 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.
Brokers are fed by many sources, and the apps on your own devices are one of them: analytics and advertising code that reports what you do, where you are and which device you use. On a Mac, that part is something you can see and cut. FireAI asks the first time any app connects to the internet, shows every destination on the world map, lets you block an app or a single domain for one app, and in Paranoid mode blocks known telemetry outright. It won’t delete what a broker already has; it can shrink what your Mac adds to the pile.
More on how the trade works in data brokers and your Mac. Download FireAI and try it free for 17 days. FireAI is made by HisnLabs.