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How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct
- sdan 7y agoOnly flaw I see with this and stuff like FB saying they "deleted" your account is: "It's deleted" is (or could be) another term for "You can't see it anymore, but it's there somewhere" Haven't gone into ToS, but regardless, there's no way we can determine if it's really gone.
- notelonmusk 7y agoI think I had read that Amazon TOS said employees wouldn't have access to your data if you closed your account. I'm sure they have some right to make temporary (we hope) backups but I thought it was a fair clause.
- sdan 7y agoRegardless of company, I don't want them to keep any "backups" of what I delete. In my view, if I say I want to "delete" my account, I don't want a single trace of my existence on that platform from then on. No emails, no backups, nothing.
- notelonmusk 7y agoThe only way in my mind to grant your wish would be if you owned the storage of your credentials. Otherwise you're just moving trust to another entity. I'm not an expert. Either way that clause showed a hint accountability from Amazon that I haven't seen too often. Not that I've spent much time comparing ToS either.
- creato 7y agoBy definition, any really effective backup (off site, offline) can't simply be modified instantly when you click a button in a web UI. The reason it takes months for backups to clear out your deleted data is that's how long it takes for the entire backup to be discarded and replaced by a new backup that reflects your deletions. While the data is likely inaccessible forever in this case, the reason the company can't just say it's been deleted is if they actually do need to restore one of these backups, the data you deleted will come back.
- sdan 7y agoThat's a reasonable reason for my data to be on their servers. However, what validates that they actually do it?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jefftk 7y agoYou can delete user data from backups much more quickly than that: * Encrypt each user's data to a user-specific key * Keep the key in hot replicated storage * When you get a deletion request, delete the key
- creato 7y agoYou still need to back up the keys? How does this solve anything? Backups aren't just about replication/redundancy, they also protect you from bugs and other sources of corrupted data.
- jefftk 7y agoYou can back up the keys in ways where it's very easy to purge them: no tapes, easy to recall and edit.
- creato 7y agoThe fact that backups can't be accessed and modified easily for a long period of time is a feature, not a bug, regardless of the actual mechanism of implementation (like tapes). That's what stops e.g. ransomware from affecting backups in addition to the primary storage. A backup that can be edited to delete data like an encryption key instantly when the user tells it do is also a backup that can be easily lost or corrupted.
- thrownaway954 7y agothat's exactly what happened to the people who requested (and PAID mind you) to have their Ashley Madison accounts deleted. All they did was mark a deleted bit in the database and from what I remember these PAID $70 USD to have their account deleted.
- freedomben 7y agoLink is a little buried in the article: https://myactivity.google.com/ https://myactivity.google.com/
- ignoramous 7y agoThe controls: https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-personalization https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-personalization
- odysseus 7y agoIs there an automated way to get it to self-destruct sooner? Like every 12 or 24 hours?
- HNLurker2 7y agoYou're right Odysseus that would be awesome
- kccqzy 7y agoWeren't a lot of people on Twitter complaining that this is basically insufficient? Most of the information about you that can be profitably mined to create "insights" about you expire in less than a month, these people claim. By having Google auto-delete them in three months, it could provide some peace of mind to you, but it doesn't really affect Google's ability to target you in ads.
- judge2020 7y agoI don't think that's what Google is trying to advertise with this, the threat model is "I don't want google having 10+ years of my browsing history in case they are compromised or some G employee goes looking through my history". My point is that it isn't misleading, of course they're not going to intentionally harm their Ad business unless you really go though the trouble: https://youtu.be/NQ6-DP6DIiU https://youtu.be/NQ6-DP6DIiU
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/o87EK http://archive.is/o87EK
- JC5413789642675 7y agoThank you for this.
- bambax 7y ago> For those who don’t want Google to create a record of their location history at all, there’s a switch for that. On the My Activity page, click Activity controls and scroll to Location history and turn the switch to the off position. Yes, that's what I do. But then Google Maps on the phone nags you constantly that it should be on. Removing the nagging would be an immense improvement and proof of commitment to privacy on Google's part.
- lainga 7y agoLucky! I get some kind of fleeting toast message (sub-quarter of a second) about some kind of permission missing, before the app closes itself entirely.
- nieve 7y agoBe very careful about combining Inactive Account Manager with telling Google not to store activity data. I started getting countdown to deletion warnings telling me I needed to log in to show I wasn't inactive, but no matter how often I did it was ignored completely until I turned on activity tracking. I'm not sure if this is a rare bug or working as intended, but it could go badly. In the end I turned off Inactive account management and activity tracking, but it was a bit disturbing.
- anonytrary 7y agoThis sounds like The Monkey's Paw. They granted you your wish of tracking no personal data, now they can't even verify your account's identity, and their inactive account cleanup job has scheduled you for deletion. Very interesting! The line between necessary data and personal data is a finer one than I thought.
- hosteur 7y agoSounds like a gdpr violation
- lima 7y agoOr an edge case they didn't consider, and will likely fix.
- kirk1982 7y agothe data will be deleted from the front end but it'll still stay at google servers for like 2 to 3 years. So basically a useless thing to do.
- lucasverra 7y agoany source for that claim ?
- why-oh-why 7y agoA few months ago someone posted a tool that cleared this and old tweets as well, but I can’t remember the name. I wish there was a tool that regularly nuked my Facebook history as well, from comments in random groups to likes across the site. I have no use for things I commented 10 years ago.
- cpeterso 7y ago"Twitter Archive Deleter" is a Glitch app that walks you through deleting your whole Twitter archive without having to give access to a 3rd party service. I haven't used it myself. https://twitter-archive-deleter.glitch.me/ https://twitter-archive-deleter.glitch.me/
- crusty511 7y agoPerfect. Twitter have been ignoring my request to delete my data.
- jefftk 7y ago> I have no use for things I commented 10 years ago. This attitude confuses me. Looking back at things I wrote ten years ago makes me think "huh, I used to believe X and now I don't, why did I change my mind?" and "X used to be really important to me and now it's not, what happened?". If I'm writing something today I'll often look back at what I've said about it previously (and I like having most of what I've written as blog posts so that's easy). Then there's the benefit to others: being able to look back at what people were thinking in the past is super useful for understanding how the world has changed, and textual comments are great for that.
- why-oh-why 7y agoI’ll be honest. I used to preserve everything and I also was surprised at a friend who’d reset his Twitter profile every so often. But it feels like everything can cause outrage these days and I don’t want to know what will look bad in 10 more years, out of context. I’ll take out the archive and keep the memory on my computer, not online, for everyone to see.
- Roritharr 7y agoUsually, as with turning off location history, I feel this only hurts the user, as I don't believe any relevant parties won't have access to the deleted entries if the need arises. The only person who doesn't have access to that data will be the subject the data originated from.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoThis is what it boils down to for me. Plausible deniability. “We don’t have your data because you told us to delete it. Chortled chortle.”
- tzfld 7y agoMy concern about these deletion request is that you are totally at the will of the platforms, that they actually will delete your data. This already imply trust towards them. And if you have trust they handling data with responsibility, why would you need to ask for delete?
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoThis is how I feel about it. I don’t have any faith that I’m going to be protected from current / future persecution because I ticked / didn’t tick some box on some control panel on some service provided by Morally Bankrupt MegaCorp.
- theelous3 7y agoThat's a bit pessimistic/paranoid and off the bat doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If your data is supposed to have been deleted but they ignored it, they have it illegally. If someone from the state wants to prosecute you and requests the data, the company wouldn't own up to having it, because they're not allowed have it. Why would they lie to you, and then sell themselves out to the state? Fine, they might keep it, but not in order to assist in prosecutions lol
- Lio 7y agoThe way Google acts with regard to privacy law is similar to how they act with regard to tax law. That is they look for loopholes and places they can use dark patterns to nudge users into giving up more data. They stay within the rules but push the envelope of what’s acceptable to the legal limit. It’s not that they are holding onto data specifically to support prosecutions it’s that they hold onto data because that’s what Google do. They’d hand that over because they have it and to not cooperate would unnecessarily cause them business friction they could easily avoid.
- theelous3 7y agoSo the conspiracy is rather that the delete button simply doesn't do anything? I don't think that would go down well for the prosecution if you ever ended up in court. The reality is that 99.99% of users never even open their account settings, let alone micromanage their identity's state across dozens of platforms. Google wouldn't even notice if all hn readers deleted all of their data and deactivated their accounts tomorrow. The most reasonable thing for them to do is to actually delete the data, and avoid all headaches. It's the more profitable move. You look like good guys and avoid legal problems.
- acollins1331 7y agoDoes anyone have any insight on what actually happens to this data? Is it really deleted or just stored in a warehouse somewhere inaccessible to me but accessible to some snooping government or hacker?
- mda 7y agoMany time discussed before on HN with some input by Google SREs. It is totally deleted (with some delay because of backups) https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention?hl=en https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention?hl=en
- jedimastert 7y agoIf Google didn't want to delete your data, they wouldn't lie about it, they just wouldn't give you the option.
- adam12 7y ago"How to auto-delete your search history Most of Google’s new privacy controls are in a web tool called My Activity. (Here’s the URL: https://myactivity.google.com. https://myactivity.google.com.) Once you get into the tool and click on Activity Controls, you will see an option called Web & App Activity. Click Manage Activity and then the button under the calendar icon. Here, you can set your activity history on several Google products to automatically erase itself after three months or after 18 months. This data includes searches made on Google.com, voice requests made with Google Assistant, destinations that you looked up on Maps and searches in Google’s Play app store."
- user51416 7y agoThis does not change Googles behavioral profile on you. In fact, it just adds another data point on your profile that implies that you don't trust Google to protect you data.
- gumby 7y agoThree months is a hilarious joke. The value of analytics data decays steeply; they let you delete the stuff that's not particularly valuable to them. If Google actually cared about your privacy you'd be able to delete the info for shorter intervals, or even have it not stored at all.
- Spoom 7y agoThey do. You can turn it off entirely in most (all?) cases.
- john-shaffer 7y agoI set this, even though I've blacklisted Google on Firefox. (I just use Chromium if I need to use Gmail). But, how can I stop Google collecting data on my phone? I was initially blocking Google because of censorship, but I can't find any way to control my phone, and it's feeling really personal now.
- Jaruzel 7y ago> ...it will begin rolling out a new private mode for when you’re navigating to a destination with its Google Maps app, which could come in handy if you’re going somewhere you want to keep secret, like a therapist’s office. There we go again, shaming mental health :(