5 ms·
Having worked at Heroku and had a large part in building Heroku Postgres I do not recall this explicit policy, and it seems very squirrelly to me. Maybe this ca
by craigkerstiens 4y ago
Having worked at Heroku and had a large part in building Heroku Postgres I do not recall this explicit policy, and it seems very squirrelly to me. Maybe this came in as a policy in recent years and it is the case, but still seems like hiding behind a policy as opposed to doing right by customers.
You could easily block all incoming connections to the database. For a free database of 10k rows there were no SLAs, and you would still technically be hosting the database.
Even taking a dump and emailing it to me feels like a safer option here.
There were better answers here for sure. If the honest answer is we just didn't feel the effort was worth it for this class of users at least own that.
- robryan 4y agoYeah ideally hold onto a backup for say a year, if the owner hasn't come and downloaded it after a year can then assume that they don't want it.
- johannes1234321 4y agoIt's not that easy. Those databases might contain personal information which is protected under different privacy laws like GDPR, HIPAA and others and Heroku/Salesforce can not simply store that for longer than agreed upon and Heroku cancelling the account enables the retention period as the customer agreed upon as part of the T&C.
- tuukkah 4y agoThe account was not cancelled.
- jbverschoor 4y agoI wonder if you guys delete email addresses from people who ask to unsubscribe , or when I tell t you to delete my information, according to gdpr Probably not, because it’s ” difficult “
- johannes1234321 4y agoMany avoid it, but once they have to deal with a (ex-)customer's lawyer they learn what is even more difficult.
- tptacek 4y agoHaving been through a SOC2 audit: this wouldn't fly. It's on the checklist of issues that you get hit with regardless of what kind of company you are: when customer accounts are terminated, the data retention clock starts ticking. You can pick an arbitrary time frame for retention, but whatever you pick, you have to communicate to users, and you can't just change it on a whim. Normal customers want this clock short. They don't want you to retain their stuff after they cancel.
- shkkmo 4y agoThe customer account wasn't terminated, the free DB being used by paid Dynos was deleted without any input from or notification to the customer. I highly doubt normal customers want this clock short when the cancellation is not customer initiated.
- tptacek 4y agoData retention policies are written by compliance people, not product people, so distinctions like overt, deliberate cancellation and "cancellation for nonpayment" or "abandonment" or "discontinuation" usually aren't captured in them. I'm not saying it's great that Heroku deleted these databases; I'm saying: the description given upthread, that the databases were deleted because of contractual requirements, is super plausible.
- shkkmo 4y agoPlausible, sure, but that doesn't mean it isn't a cop out. There are many things that Heroku could have done to prevent this, like delaying the disconnection when they don't have confirmed delivery of the notifications and/or when they are connected to paid dynos/accounts. Thus didn't happen because of the contract, but because the people implementing this transition didn't give a crap.
- tptacek 4y agoI'm just telling you that what the commenter upthread said rang true. I'm not offering an assessment of compliance regimes.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago> Even taking a dump and emailing it to me feels like a safer option here. I genuinely had to read this twice to get the intended meaning.
- yuubi 4y agoas someone who doesn't use heroku, so disregard my opinion: i'd probably prefer feces-by-email to surprise database deletion
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- FPGAhacker 4y agoThere is a legal difference between a company policy and a contract with a customer.