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Soft deletes have been popular since the internet became accessible to the average person. When I was younger I was a huge advocate for soft deleting pretty muc
by debaserab2 6y ago
Soft deletes have been popular since the internet became accessible to the average person. When I was younger I was a huge advocate for soft deleting pretty much everything. It felt like the obvious, easy choice - why not retain the data incase you need to use it for something else down the road? It took years to understand the ramifications of storing that data in a secure way really means, and that often times the reason it gets used later isn't something you intended it to be used for when you designed the data structure.
I don't think that way anymore and I truly believe hard deletes should be the default unless you have a very compelling reason to soft delete (and you should usually only soft delete with some guarantee of future deletion via a publicly accessible data retention/erasure policy)
- 05 6y agoIt's not rocket science - encrypt with a one time symmetric key, encrypt the key with a public key, store blob and key marked as deleted. Store the corresponding private asymmetric key on a hardware token to be used when you decide you need the deleted data. That way no db hack exposes any usable data.
- debaserab2 6y agoDB hacks aren't even close to being the only (or worst) threat. Encryption means nothing in a company or bankruptcy buyout where the purchaser may have a completely different set of ethics than yours.
- WJW 6y agoThat is all good and well against simple actors, but does not defend against the company being bought out and the new owner(s) deciding to decrypt and sell the entire database to some shady data broker. Or against the FBI/your local equivalent coming over for a friendly visit and confiscating both the hardware token and the database.