This article is highly misleading. Sure, certain kinds of data (like credit card data or medical data) can be a liability if not properly managed. If you are

This article is highly misleading. Sure, certain kinds of data (like credit card data or medical data) can be a liability if not properly managed. If you are working in one of those industries you already know that (although arguably many financial and medical companies underestimate the risks). In contrast, data about what users have clicked, comments on an online forum, or who has friended who on your social media site is not a liability. In many cases this data is already public. Even in cases where it's not, it is usually incredibly boring for any hacker to steal, like what web pages John Doe has clicked on in the last 10 minutes. Hackers are going to go after stuff like social security numbers or credit card numbers, not data about the average length of time people spent looking at Pepsi Inc. web page layout A versus web page layout B. The argument that you should only store "the data that you need" is a circular one. How do you know what data you need? Well, you run an analysis. How do you run an analysis? Using the data you have. Short-sighted policies like throwing away historical data, as the article recommends, effectively blind you to long-term trends.