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Apps supporting account creation must also offer account deletion
- vxNsr 5y agoIf this is actually enforced it will be a huge boon for everyone. Especially if they require proof of some sort that the account info is gone.
- aroman 5y agoWhat kind of proof could establish that something has been deleted?
- baq 5y agoGDPR data package request should return an empty set.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoWell, here's a snippet from my GdprReportGenerator.java : account = getAccount(); if (account.wasDeleted) { return emptyPdf(); } Of course there might be hell to pay if the EU catches this, but well..
- amelius 5y agoAn "AppStore oath" could come close.
- avalys 5y agoWhat actual benefit will anyone derive from this?
- randomchars 5y agoThere are a lot of shitty companies that require you to contact support or even wait weeks before you can delete your account.
- jbverschoor 5y agoYep.. for subscription cancellation and account deletion. One of the reasons I love the AppStore
- jamil7 5y agoThe ability to easily delete an account they don’t want anymore? Without jumping through hoops like contacting support. Not sure your question is serious or not.
- nstj 5y ago> How do you cancel your Clubhouse account? I was invited to talk about Apple and monopolies, and that was (mostly) a fine conversation. But I have no interest in staying in that place, yet all I see is a Log Out option, no "Cancel Account" option? > @DHH - Jul 3, 2020 [0] - https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1278815203514150913 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1278815203514150913
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoI can create an iCloud account on my iPhone at the top of the settings menu. How do I delete it?
- iseanstevens 5y agoThat is not an app. Also the stakes are a lot higher as it could delete all of someone’s photos, backups, music and video purchases - not to mention all of their apps and related data. I believe you can delete it through the iCloud website.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoOf course, people use their apps for all sorts of important things, and it would be disruptive to accidentally delete their accounts from many of them. This issue can be mitigated through confirmation dialogs and other measures. So Apple’s new pro-consumer policy applies to everyone but Apple. Interesting, but not unexpected.
- mosselman 5y agoThe point is that iCloud is not an app. The account you are referring to is a phone account, not app account. You are comparing apples to oranges.
- flo123456 5y ago> comparing apples to oranges. Great pun. :-D
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoApple writes these rules, and as platform owner of iOS they can design the rules not to apply to themselves. I don’t think that’s a good defense against the obvious hypocrisy here. A major part of Apple’s playbook these days is to design some policy that has the effect of advantaging themselves vs. competitors, while also helping the consumer. I think it’s an effective strategy, but it also deserves some criticism. The consumer would be helped more if Apple treated their own services equally.
- cton 5y agoRelevant text under 5.1.1 (v): > (v) Account Sign-In: If your app doesn’t include significant account-based features, let people use it without a login. If your app supports account creation, you must also offer account deletion within the app. Apps may not require users to enter personal information to function, except when directly relevant to the core functionality of the app or required by law. If your core app functionality is not related to a specific social network (e.g. Facebook, WeChat, Weibo, Twitter, etc.), you must provide access without a login or via another mechanism. Pulling basic profile information, sharing to the social network, or inviting friends to use the app are not considered core app functionality. The app must also include a mechanism to revoke social network credentials and disable data access between the app and social network from within the app. An app may not store credentials or tokens to social networks off of the device and may only use such credentials or tokens to directly connect to the social network from the app itself while the app is in use.
- toxik 5y agoWeird how these integrity precautions are being championed by Apple and not the EU or US, democracy is dead, long live corpocracy
- stingraycharles 5y agoTo be fair the “right to be forgotten” is, in fact, a law in the EU, it’s just that often you need to go through great lengths to exercise this right. Apple’s playing field is just much more narrow, which allows it to enforce rules like these in an elegant manner which makes for a much better experience to the end user.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThis is more about the "Hotel California" business model where you can't cancel a service without jumping through ridiculous hoops.
- WalterGR 5y ago
- kgraves 5y agoThis is great on Apple’s part for enforcing this for every account based app, now if only HN offered account deletion…
- nindalf 5y agoOr indeed, deletion of your comments. The way dang explained it to me was that each comment thread is a shared work created by multiple people rather than a collection of individual comments. Since you don’t own your comments, you can’t delete them. He is very accommodating about requests to disavow comments from your account. But I don’t expect people on HN to complain about this. They hold every other website to absurd standards on data ownership and content moderation, while happily being users of a site where they own none of the data and are subject to strict rules about what can be discussed and how.
- what_ever 5y agoAlso on ux of everything but the HN website must be perfect.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> Since you don’t own your comments where on HN did I waive or assign copyright or ownership to YC? The FAQ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ) says you just need to email them to get stuff deleted: > we care about protecting individual users and take care of privacy requests every day, so if we can help, please email hn@ycombinator.com
- snowwrestler 5y agoYou didn’t waive or assign copyright but you did “grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.” So, with a license like that, they can legally choose to keep showing your comment if they want to. That said, I think dang will help delete things if you email to ask and have a good reason. I’ve done it with a couple of my comments.
- mikeiz404 5y agoIt would be great for this to be reestablished as the norm for online services. I think some might argue that being able to intercept a user at account deletion via support gives them the opportunity to either solve a misunderstanding in the product or better understand why the user is leaving but I think there are much better ways to accomplish this. I’m more convinced this is done as a dark pattern to add friction to the deletion process. A notable example was having to contact support to delete a Starbucks account.
- bickeringyokel 5y agoI think it's much more likely that it just takes timeand money to develop how the deletion process works, testing the implementation etc. It's easier to just not have the capability since it's not critical to the majority of users.
- mikeiz404 5y agoFair point, that’s probably a decent part of it, but the deletion process has to be defined somewhat formally for a support person or some one else to do it, no? And they could still offer an account deletion button which automatically filed a support request. Most sites which don’t offer account deletion have made me dig or google for a solution instead of putting any info in a contextually relevant spot such as in account settings or in a support article about disabling an account. Unfortunately I do not have evidence to justify this position but for most companies from an incentives standpoint as I understand them: 1) a user who cannot delete an account will have a far easier time using the service again compared to a user who has deleted an account so they are more likely to reengage, 2) user numbers and active user numbers may be important metrics for funding or company evaluation, 3) assuming data is deleted on account deletion then that can no longer be used for marketing or model training, 4) services which rely on the network effects from the user base need to have a relevant and usually large user base to provide consistent value, 5) if done manually there support and or dev cost on each account delete request.
- theshrike79 5y agoThis will be interesting for companies who have a combined account for multiple applications. How do you clearly explain to a user that if they delete their account on app X, apps Y and Z will also have all of their account data deleted?
- villgax 5y agoor simply not allow them to login via iOS lol instead of deleting anything on the backend
- mgol94 5y agoLying users about how you process their data could lead to legal action in EU
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- k-mcgrady 5y agoI’ve seen quite a lot of people complaining about this on Twitter. Is there some negative to this I’m not aware of other than companies losing customers? I’ve come across more and more sites in recent years with no account deletion option and it’s hugely frustrating. One I discover it and manage to shut my account down via a support channel they have lost me for good. There is no way I’m ever becoming a customer again because I can’t trust them with my data if they’re going to hold it hostage. If they’d included the account deletion option I very well may have returned in the future.
- WalterGR 5y agoI’ve come across more and more sites in recent years with no account deletion option and it’s hugely frustrating. It’s just not something that developers have really had to account for thus far. You ingest data and then it and derived data goes god knows where in your organization. How do you track all of that down? (There’s “should be” and “actually is”. I’m referring to the latter.)
- yoz-y 5y agoAt least in Europe with GDPR they, at least legally, had to account for this.
- Iv 5y agoReddit has been allowing easy account deletion and content deletion for years (since the beginning I believe?) and while I enjoy that freedom, it also makes some old conversations almost impossible to read where [deleted] answers to [deleted] and only one message in the middle of the conversations still there saying "Wow that's really interesting information! Everyone should read that!" This has even become a way of trolling in some subreddits where you try to make people waste time answering you in detail then deleting all your messages. This has prompted some people to quote bigger parts of the original message. Deleting accounts is a right, no problem about it, but deleting public information is really problematic. The right to be forgotten should be a moral right, not a legal one. I don't want it to be illegal to point out politicians responsibilities in Iran-Contra or the Iraq war even 20 years after.
- hortense 5y agoA related question about this: if an account was flagged for something (e.g. the account was shadow banned), is it OK by GRPD standards to: 1/ not tell the user this info. 2/ keep track of the fact this account was flagged after the account was deleted, for instance by keeping a hash of the email address of the accounts that were flagged?
- anchpop 5y agoNot sure about #1, but #2 is definitely allowed, although you’re supposed to keep only the data that you need to prevent them from circumventing your ban system.
- egocentric 5y agoNow do subscriptions. For all the people who fall prey to misleading tactics and don’t know how to cancel.
- cube2222 5y agoI think that's already there. If you subscribe using the app store subscription mechanism you can see a list of subscriptions in your account settings, including unsubscribe buttons.
- egocentric 5y agoMy point is for that to also be in the downloaded app, since the new rule requires account creation and deletion to both be in the same place - which I think is a natural place to look for it as a user, savvy or not.
- xuki 5y agoWell, you can blame Apple for that, there is no way to developers to cancel a subscription or issue a refund.
- barbecue_sauce 5y agoMost iOS apps already don't do subscriptions in-application because of Apple's fee requirements.
- thomasahle 5y agoA few years ago I was part of an AI customer service startup. One of our first customers was a web hosting company, and we were supposed to take some of the load off the chat support team. When we talked to the support team they told us their by far largest task was handling account deletions. They had tried to just put a button in the control panel, but the CEO of the company thought it was bad for retention. So we started writing scripts for "I want to cancel my account" and similar requests. The official process also required the users to verify by email after talking to support, so there were a number of steps. Eventually we needed an API call for actually completing the process. But we were told the CEO had to approve. The CEO didn't know we were working on automating account deletions. And when we finally got to talk to him about giving us API access, he decided it would be easier to just add an account deletion button to the control panel. That's how we lost our initial business case.
- tenryuu 5y agoTo me, even if you don't have an account deletion button. User retention isn't going to matter because the people who are looking for it aren't going to use the service anyway, you are just holding onto dead data
- intricatedetail 5y agoCEO with attachment issues, the worst kind...
- thomasahle 5y agoAs long as they were still paying...
- Brian_K_White 5y agoTell that to giganews or dejanews whoever the F it was some usenet service I signed up for once, who had no way to cancel the account on the site, required a phone call during business hours in Sweden or somewhere, and I think I even did the first few of their hoops like sent an email to the special address, but when they didn't simply honor the request, I just stopped paying. I think either the card was expiring naturally or it was google pay or something that I could shut off. (it was years ago by now so thats why the vague details) anyway, they actually tried to say I owed them money for years and I even got emails and calls from collections companies for a few years. If they had been in the US I bet it would have been harder to just blow them off like that. Simply stopping payments is not the ultimate trump you and I both thoight it should be. For my part I decided I was on record as having requested to cancel the service, and had not used the service, so do your worst. Go ahead and try to convince a judge that I owe you anything.
- sturmeh 5y agoExpectation: Apps offer account deletion, finally empowering the user. Reality: Apps no longer support seamless account creation and instead redirect the user to a website to register, user can no longer manage any aspect of their account from the app.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y agoWhat are your assumptions?
- danaris 5y agoNot the GP, but seems to me the assumption there is "companies will do everything in their power to make it hard for you to stop making their numbers go up", whether those numbers are actual money, user data, or just total user counts. Alongside, of course, the assumption that "companies don't respect their users in any way, shape, or form." These seem like assumptions which, while they certainly have exceptions, are well borne out by the available data.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- b8ne 5y agoBased on a quick Cmd+F this document doesn't explicitly define what 'Account deletion' must be. Does it just mean that the user does no longer exist on the app's frontend, but all data is retained? Or does it explicitly mean that all data relevant to that user is deleted?
- kart23 5y ago>If your app doesn’t include significant account-based features, let people use it without a login...Apps may not require users to enter personal information to function, except when directly relevant to the core functionality of the app or required by law. If your core app functionality is not related to a specific social network (e.g. Facebook, WeChat, Weibo, Twitter, etc.), you must provide access without a login or via another mechanism. Ok, shoutout Apple for this. But shouldn't they apply their policy intent to themselves too? I can technically use an iPhone without an AppleID, but you need to login to download apps. I would argue installing apps shouldn't require a login.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y agoNot all apps are free and persistent purchases tied to a user account are certainly preferable to needing to keep a list of license keys handy every time you delete and reinstall an app, etc.
- kart23 5y agoyeah, an exception for paid apps would be ok.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoIndeed. Same for icloud. Last time I upgraded my gf's phone the constant hammering that you need to set up icloud was obnoxious.
- nextstep 5y agoI hope they finally crack down on Instagram (and maybe some of Facebook’s other apps?) which make you go to the browser to deactivate/delete your account. I’ve done this a few times (temporarily deactivate) and requiring me to switch to the browser first and login with my IG credentials — something I would never otherwise do — seems like a sneaky way to drop a tracking cookie in my browser before I leave for a while.
- acd10j 5y agoHackernews should also provide account deletion option. In case of accounts getting doxxed for people who do not want it. Account deletion will help in saving fallout.
- alok-g 5y agoAn interesting corollary: A software supporting file creation must also support deletion. A user can create a document in Microsoft Word and save it. Why can't they also delete it from within Word. If they have an open document, where's the delete button to just delete it. :-)
- guymarion 5y ago'Right to forget' is required in EU, and it's been illegal in California since 2018 for subscription services that take signups online to not offer online cancel options too (i.e. without being forced to call customer service). https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/04/californias-new-online-cancellation-law-benefits-many-disgruntled-subscribers-in-other-places-too/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/04/californias-new-online-can... Visa cc passed new policy in 2020 and New York did in February 2021. So the infuriating practice of forcing us to call or go through chat loops to quit a basic subscription are numbered. I feel strongly enough that I started brightback.com in 2018 to help make online cancels easy for app/saas developers to offer while keeping it simple for the customer.