Removed: every sale of Californians’ personal information — the whole product line, not one list inside it.
Outcome: a $45,000 fine and an order to stop selling all forms of personal information about Californians, which the agency described as “effectively removing it from the marketplace in California”.
Rickenbacher Data LLC, trading as Datamasters, bought and resold the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of millions of people with Alzheimer’s disease, drug addiction, bladder incontinence and other health conditions, for targeted advertising.
Health conditions were one slice of the catalogue. The decision records lists sold by age and perceived race — “Senior Lists” and “Hispanic Lists” — and lists built from political views, grocery store purchases, banking activity and health-related purchases. The company did this during 2024 without registering with the California Data Broker Registry.
The remedy is the interesting part for this site. The Board did not ask for a retention policy or an opt-out form; it stopped the sale. Michael Macko, CalPrivacy’s head of enforcement: “Reselling lists of people battling Alzheimer’s disease is a recipe for trouble. In the wrong hands, these lists could be used to target people for more than just advertising.”
A business whose entire model is the dataset cannot comply by deleting a column. When the data is the product, the only version of “delete what you do not need” that holds is the one that ends the sale.
Source: CalPrivacy, CalPrivacy Brings New Round of Enforcement Actions Against Data Brokers (8 January 2026)