DROP Service Interim Update

Earlier this year, I wrote about how your can protect your privacy using California’s Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) service. DROP launched on January 1, 2026, and data brokers began processing requests on August 1, 2026. Given that data brokers are required to delete data within 45 days of receiving a request, I wanted to see how things were coming along at day 29. Here are my current stats, as reported on my DROP account:

And here is the DROP website’s glossary of deletion statuses:

When browsing the full list of data brokers, I see this:

Unfortunately there are 66 pages to scroll through on my account, and there does not appear to be a way to export the full list of data brokers along with my request statuses. It would be nice for them to add that feature later.

The DROP website provides the following information: “Data brokers will begin accessing DROP soon. Processing becomes mandatory beginning August 1, 2026, but status updates can take up to 90 days to appear in DROP depending on data broker workflows. Your status for each data broker will update once your request is processed.” My interpretation is that either (1) a majority of data brokers (490 out of 656) have not processed my deletion request yet and/or (2) some of those 490 data brokers have actually processed my deletion request, but the statuses have not yet been updated in DROP due to data broker workflows.

While the DROP website says, “Under law, data brokers have 45 days to delete your data after they receive your request,” it seems hard to determine if the law has been broken if the statuses can take 90 days to be updated. In the worst case scenario, a data broker could delete my data on day 45, and then it could take up to 90 days to update the DROP website, so that would be 135 days after August 1 which would be December 14, 2026. Maybe I’ll check back again toward the end of the year to see how well data brokers are complying with DROP requests.

University of California Acceptance Rate Data

If you have a high school senior who is getting ready to apply to University of California schools, you may have seen acceptance rate statistics such as the ones from Money Magazine a few months ago which I wrote about in my “LLM Analysis of College Ratings” blog. For convenience, I am re-posting the graphic here.

The acceptance rate statistics are from a nationwide sample, but what if I told you that you could look up University of California acceptance rate statistics for students at a specific high school? The University of California Information Center publishes data on Admissions by Source School and segments data into several subcategories as shown here:

The data tables show applicants, admissions, and enrollments by California high schools and community colleges for freshmen and transfer entrants by source school, mean GPA, ethnicity and school. Of particular interest might be “Single high school lookup” under the “Freshman admission by source high school” section. Data tables are provided for:

• Counts of fall freshmen by race/ethnicity
• Counts of fall freshmen by gender
• Average freshman GPA

After clicking on any of these 3 options, you will need to enter the high school name in the “Search for school name” field. Depending on the name of your school, the exact high school name could be tricky to find. If you come up blank, then go back to the home page and click on any of the 3 options under Freshman admission by source high school > All source high schools. Then filter by city and/or county and browse for the name of the high school of interest.

Back to the “Single high school lookup” section… After selecting a data table for counts by race/ethnicity, gender, or GPA, you will have the option to filter by year. You’ll also see breakdowns by campus, fall term, and applications/admissions/enrollment.

If you prefer to sort and filter data in Excel like I do, you’re in luck because there is a download button that gives you the option to download as an image, data, cross tab, PDF, or PowerPoint. Selecting “data” will result in the download of a .csv file which you can then play with in your favorite spreadsheet or database application.

I found this data to be useful because although the national acceptance rate statistics are good to know, being able to see acceptance rate statistics from my child’s high school provided a slightly different perspective. I hope you’ll find it as useful as I did. And if you found this data interesting, there are plenty of other data tables to explore at the University of California Information Center.

Citi Costco Visa Identity Verification

Last year our family visited several Asian countries, and we managed to get by with eSIM data-only plans. The only setbacks occurred when our Citi Costco Visa card flagged some transactions as suspicious (which I wrote about here and here), and because Citi attempted to notify me via voice and SMS text—which we did not receive—it prevented our purchases from being made. This year, I made sure to add my Google Voice number to my Citi Costco Visa card in hopes that I would be given an option to verify transactions using a data-only eSIM plan. It worked. When making a transaction, I was presented with the following options for identity verification:

You may have noticed that there were options to call or text me at the …2505 number, the the only option for the …2516 (Google Voice) number was to call me. I am not certain, but my phone contact information on the Citi website are:

• Home Number: …2505  → I think Citi uses this for calls
• Primary Mobile: …2505  → I think Citi uses this for text messages
• Alerts Mobile: …2516  → I think Citi uses this for calls

If my assumptions above are correct, then I think Citi should also present an option to send text messages to the alerts mobile number. While calling me at my Google Voice number worked for identity verification, I would have preferred getting a text message at my Google Voice number so I could copy and paste the code.

In any case, if you have a Google Voice or another VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service, consider adding that contact number to your Citi card so that you can easily verify your identity using data-only eSIM plans when traveling abroad. I assume that this approach may work for other credit cards, but you’ll need to review your options and/or ask customer support.