4 ms·

Nope, happy to fall on a sword if this happens though. Also – really bummed you got downvoted – this point is very valid and other folks in my position should

Nope, happy to fall on a sword if this happens though. Also – really bummed you got downvoted – this point is very valid and other folks in my position should take note.

notyourday 9y ago
@codezero, my point was not about falling on a sword. Rather it was that NH has this extreme naivete related to statements coming from those that do not have any real say. How many people here think that data is removed from BI data lakes when a user deletes the account ( or at +N months )? [Edit: Downvotes on this one also?] Ask what happens to customer's data used by business intelligence when customer deletes the account in your company. Do it in email so it is in writing. It would be extremely illuminating. Ask if what when a customer or your app acting on a behalf of your customer executes a DELETE against your API your API deletes the record or: 1) sets a deleted_at to now which your ORM treats as "deleted" 2) send a message to a queue (Customer XYZ deleted record P) which has multiple subscribers, one of which executes a deletion while the other one dumps the new state into a BI lake/archive dataset/what-if-a-customer-comes-back-would-not-we-want-to-be-able-to-give-them-all-their-data-back database?
- codezero 9y ago
  I get where you are coming from but you are also making some assumptions that are a bit broad. It’s a laudable goal to educate naive folks on HN, I support you in that, but you should try a different approach. I’m not naive. I’ve been working in tech since 1996 when I managed a dial up ISP. I worked at Red Hat the day they IPOed and have been with Heap for almost four years. I was employee number 8, and personally wrote much of the code to remove data from our databases. We have strict controls and logging around who can access our infra, as is necessary for SOC2 compliance. We have rolling backups (that are read only except by very specific individuals) so even if I got real mad one day and decided to ruin my career, we could restore the data, however, we don’t keep backups indefinitely so when data is deleted or removed with intent, it will eventually be gone in backups too. I’m not on the board, but I do have influence as I am the head of our solutions and support team. I am a privacy advocate and take a firm stand on protecting my customers’ data and executing their own desires to protect their customers, and I do my best to not only instill these things in my team and company, but also to make policies and controls to make them real. When I delete data, I don’t rely on a message being sent to a queue. I do not “soft” delete. When our customers ask for their data to be deleted, we delete it without delay. I will say that sending a message in a queue would be pretty efficient and if we went that route I’d have the consumer of that message verify that the data was deleted. Ultimately our backing store is Postgres, it’s not rocket science to understand how deleting that data works, we could get into a discussion about how it’s not really deleted until it’s been reallocated, at the DB and at the OS and hardware levels, but I don’t think you’re trying to make that argument. Is everything perfect? No, that would be naive to say, but we don’t assume it is and work hard to remain accountable. I’m happy to discuss this or about anything else here or over email, Skype, hangout, in person, etc, but I do want to say that you should challenge your own assumptions a bit more. Not every person or company is inherently bad, naive or ignorant. A lot of people on HN are extremely tenured, bright, and thoughtful, they just usually know better than to comment here, if anything, that is my most naive action.

Nope, happy to fall on a sword if this happens though. Also – really bummed you got downvoted – this point is very valid and other folks in my position should take note.

notyourday 9y ago

@codezero, my point was not about falling on a sword. Rather it was that NH has this extreme naivete related to statements coming from those that do not have any real say. How many people here think that data is removed from BI data lakes when a user deletes the account ( or at +N months )? [Edit: Downvotes on this one also?] Ask what happens to customer's data used by business intelligence when customer deletes the account in your company. Do it in email so it is in writing. It would be extremely illuminating. Ask if what when a customer or your app acting on a behalf of your customer executes a DELETE against your API your API deletes the record or: 1) sets a deleted_at to now which your ORM treats as "deleted" 2) send a message to a queue (Customer XYZ deleted record P) which has multiple subscribers, one of which executes a deletion while the other one dumps the new state into a BI lake/archive dataset/what-if-a-customer-comes-back-would-not-we-want-to-be-able-to-give-them-all-their-data-back database?

codezero 9y ago
I get where you are coming from but you are also making some assumptions that are a bit broad. It’s a laudable goal to educate naive folks on HN, I support you in that, but you should try a different approach. I’m not naive. I’ve been working in tech since 1996 when I managed a dial up ISP. I worked at Red Hat the day they IPOed and have been with Heap for almost four years. I was employee number 8, and personally wrote much of the code to remove data from our databases. We have strict controls and logging around who can access our infra, as is necessary for SOC2 compliance. We have rolling backups (that are read only except by very specific individuals) so even if I got real mad one day and decided to ruin my career, we could restore the data, however, we don’t keep backups indefinitely so when data is deleted or removed with intent, it will eventually be gone in backups too. I’m not on the board, but I do have influence as I am the head of our solutions and support team. I am a privacy advocate and take a firm stand on protecting my customers’ data and executing their own desires to protect their customers, and I do my best to not only instill these things in my team and company, but also to make policies and controls to make them real. When I delete data, I don’t rely on a message being sent to a queue. I do not “soft” delete. When our customers ask for their data to be deleted, we delete it without delay. I will say that sending a message in a queue would be pretty efficient and if we went that route I’d have the consumer of that message verify that the data was deleted. Ultimately our backing store is Postgres, it’s not rocket science to understand how deleting that data works, we could get into a discussion about how it’s not really deleted until it’s been reallocated, at the DB and at the OS and hardware levels, but I don’t think you’re trying to make that argument. Is everything perfect? No, that would be naive to say, but we don’t assume it is and work hard to remain accountable. I’m happy to discuss this or about anything else here or over email, Skype, hangout, in person, etc, but I do want to say that you should challenge your own assumptions a bit more. Not every person or company is inherently bad, naive or ignorant. A lot of people on HN are extremely tenured, bright, and thoughtful, they just usually know better than to comment here, if anything, that is my most naive action.