4 ms·

I think actual deletion of accounts is not a functionality that is high on any startups list - disabling is probably the usual course of action? However, to lie

I think actual deletion of accounts is not a functionality that is high on any startups list - disabling is probably the usual course of action? However, to lie about it is another matter entirely.

deepnet 11y ago
It is a legal requirement in the EU under Data Protection Laws.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Outright deletion of data, especially anything used in financial calculations, might run afoul of Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States. I say "might" because it's not exactly spelled out that way in the regulation. Basically, any sort of reports that are used to make financial decisions must be replicable. You have to be able to show an auditor how you came to your numbers. You have to show how the report would have looked at the time it was made, and what data it would have contained. I could potentially see raw count of users, or counts of users combined with popularity of videos (and growth of popularity across those videos) be a part of plans on how to monetize such a site. If Livecoding.TV had made revenue projections based on some future monetization plan and had started circulating this plan amongst potential investors, it becomes a serious landmine to hard-delete data. Most places assume this just means "keep backups", but I don't know anyone who is operationally prepared to restore year-old backups of databases and running application code to be able to appease such an auditor. Full compliance is really hard, so I almost always advise people to go for soft-delete instead. There are any number of technical and business reasons why soft-delete is better, too. If this report that a 3rd party registered a new account with the same name just to be able to troll everyone involved turns out to be true, that would be one of those reasons. That said, that's a completely different issue than privacy compliance. Any sane authorization system should make it easy to de-authorize specific sets of data for everyone. No data request meant to go out into the world should ever lack an authorization check. Given the difficulties of keeping tabs on internal- versus external data, I just generally believe all data requests should come along with an authorization check, regardless of whether or not it's required, because you can't ever really predict what code a jr. programmer is going to reuse some day.
Twirrim 11y ago
Deletion of accounts is a very low bar that should be met for anything to be qualified as a minimum viable product. It shouldn't be that hard, especially if you take 5 minutes to think about your assumptions and how you could handle it, right at the start. This is a service that ends up running on the internet and can have international people using it. That means you need to be very conscious of international laws. EU citizens have a legal right to have their data deleted by sites.

I think actual deletion of accounts is not a functionality that is high on any startups list - disabling is probably the usual course of action? However, to lie about it is another matter entirely.

deepnet 11y ago

It is a legal requirement in the EU under Data Protection Laws.

moron4hire 11y ago
Outright deletion of data, especially anything used in financial calculations, might run afoul of Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States. I say "might" because it's not exactly spelled out that way in the regulation. Basically, any sort of reports that are used to make financial decisions must be replicable. You have to be able to show an auditor how you came to your numbers. You have to show how the report would have looked at the time it was made, and what data it would have contained. I could potentially see raw count of users, or counts of users combined with popularity of videos (and growth of popularity across those videos) be a part of plans on how to monetize such a site. If Livecoding.TV had made revenue projections based on some future monetization plan and had started circulating this plan amongst potential investors, it becomes a serious landmine to hard-delete data. Most places assume this just means "keep backups", but I don't know anyone who is operationally prepared to restore year-old backups of databases and running application code to be able to appease such an auditor. Full compliance is really hard, so I almost always advise people to go for soft-delete instead. There are any number of technical and business reasons why soft-delete is better, too. If this report that a 3rd party registered a new account with the same name just to be able to troll everyone involved turns out to be true, that would be one of those reasons. That said, that's a completely different issue than privacy compliance. Any sane authorization system should make it easy to de-authorize specific sets of data for everyone. No data request meant to go out into the world should ever lack an authorization check. Given the difficulties of keeping tabs on internal- versus external data, I just generally believe all data requests should come along with an authorization check, regardless of whether or not it's required, because you can't ever really predict what code a jr. programmer is going to reuse some day.

Twirrim 11y ago

Deletion of accounts is a very low bar that should be met for anything to be qualified as a minimum viable product. It shouldn't be that hard, especially if you take 5 minutes to think about your assumptions and how you could handle it, right at the start. This is a service that ends up running on the internet and can have international people using it. That means you need to be very conscious of international laws. EU citizens have a legal right to have their data deleted by sites.