Companies are hoarding personal data about you. Here’s how to get them to delete it.

The landmark California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect in 2020, gave state residents the right to ask companies to not sell their data, to provide a copy of that data or to delete that data. Virginia and Colorado have also passed consumer privacy laws, which go into effect in 2023.

As more states adopt privacy legislation — Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania may be next — more of us will get the right to ask for our data to be deleted. Some companies — including Spotify, Uber and Twitter — told us they already honor requests from people outside California when it comes to data deletion.