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I feel like that ship has sailed. Every software company I have ever worked for is dysfunctional in this regard. You might think your "delete my data" request s

I feel like that ship has sailed. Every software company I have ever worked for is dysfunctional in this regard. You might think your "delete my data" request succeeded but there is absolutely zero way to guarantee that it actually did, and chances are it didn't.

bluetidepro 2y ago
100% this. It's laughable if you believe those requests work as expected. Sure they may "delete" some surface level bs like your account or login, but there is no way it's 100% scrubbed in the way it's supposed to work.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  A lot of recourse is around intent and liability. I would like to believe my request is honored; in the event it is later proved to not have been honored, recourse is potentially available through legal and regulatory mechanisms. 23andme didn't implement strong customer identity and auth mechanisms, for example, and it cost them ~$30M to settle their data breach liability [1]. Take action, keep receipts, and failing good faith actions, step back while regulators and the legal system whack whack whack with a hammer. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494 ("HN: 23andMe settles data breach lawsuit for $30M")
  - bluetidepro 2y ago
    Oh nice, "~$30M to settle." That <$100 you get back in the class action will be amazing compensation. Sadly the legal route is a joke at this point.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - bluetidepro 2y ago
      > I'm happy if it contributes to the death of the org. But the not the death of your data. That will be sold onto someone else.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
goalonetwo 2y ago
Exactly this. Especially for a currently failing company that got an incentive to NOT delete your data (because that's the only value they still have).
ethbr1 2y ago
Historically, yes. But don't the GDPR and CCPA et al. create liability around failure-to-delete after receiving a request?
- goalonetwo 2y ago
  Good luck proving that your data was not deleted. GDPR and CCPA etc made it easy to send a request for deletion that will most probably be a frontend gimmick. How much effort are they really going to put into going back in their backups and deleting all your entries? I'm pretty sure it must be the lowest roadmap priorities.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The financial penalties are pretty nasty. And it's amazing how financial liability has a way of getting things on a VP's feature radar that common sense doesn't. The reason it was haphazardly handled prior was that there was no liability. Who cared? (legally speaking) From working inside a T25 American retail company, I can say that we went top-to-bottom and rearchitected for traceability and hard deletes as a result of the CCPA.
  - yreg 2y ago
    I have a feeling that it's also quite a difficult problem past some scale of infrastructure. If I ask Google to delete my data (EU citizen), I have trouble believing that they actually go through all of their cold storage backups where it was stored and make sure it's erased. At best I could believe that the process is designed in such a way that my soft-deleted data is unlikely to be recovered (intentionally or not) and maybe unlikely to be possible to link to my account.
    - anyfoo 2y ago
      What they should do (I have no idea what they do) is to encrypt every record belonging to a user with an individual key. Live records, backups, everything. If a user wishes to be deleted, that live key is simply obliterated, making any data the user owns unrecoverable. Since the key is not used for end to end encryption, and backends still have access to the data (as long as the key lives), it has different requirements on how it needs to be protected. The biggest challenge is backing up the key itself, as losing it means losing access to all the user’s data by design. But backing up and obliterating a single key is much, much easier than doing so for a whole set of loosely associated data across many databases.
davedx 2y ago
Agree, this is pointless. For one thing how many companies have the technical ability to remove specific records from all their database backups and logs? None that I’ve worked at
- yreg 2y ago
  Data usually leaks from production though, no? So in that perspective it's not pointless.
- HowardStark 2y ago
  Not that anyone is disagreeing, but it bears repeating: This is a lack of any real pressure from regulators, not a technical challenge. Or rather, there may be technical challenges but they absolutely can be overcome, and aren’t being tackled right now very simply because the business doesn’t care. As is so often the case, the business must be made to care.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    GDPR mandates the ability to delete the data.
    - LegionMammal978 2y ago
      Not from all backups, or so I've heard.
      - samastur 2y ago
        You heard wrong. It doesn't have to be immediate though.
        LegionMammal978 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41068881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41068881, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37941653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37941653, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085044, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34207919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34207919, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744415, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161041, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340987, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31051129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31051129, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048828, ... My impression from all that I've heard is that you should have a backup retention policy, but otherwise there's no set upper bound on how long that may be. Not that the text of the GDPR breathes a word of it, though, everything's just a rat's nest of exemptions suggested by various authorities and other parties that haven't been tested in court.
Yhippa 2y ago
I feel like at best we'll get a soft delete
sfjailbird 2y ago
Not in the EU.
jakjak123 2y ago
I dno, but delete works most places I have worked, just because it saves money

bluetidepro 2y ago

100% this. It's laughable if you believe those requests work as expected. Sure they may "delete" some surface level bs like your account or login, but there is no way it's 100% scrubbed in the way it's supposed to work.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
A lot of recourse is around intent and liability. I would like to believe my request is honored; in the event it is later proved to not have been honored, recourse is potentially available through legal and regulatory mechanisms. 23andme didn't implement strong customer identity and auth mechanisms, for example, and it cost them ~$30M to settle their data breach liability [1]. Take action, keep receipts, and failing good faith actions, step back while regulators and the legal system whack whack whack with a hammer. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494 ("HN: 23andMe settles data breach lawsuit for $30M")
- bluetidepro 2y ago
  Oh nice, "~$30M to settle." That <$100 you get back in the class action will be amazing compensation. Sadly the legal route is a joke at this point.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluetidepro 2y ago
    > I'm happy if it contributes to the death of the org. But the not the death of your data. That will be sold onto someone else.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

goalonetwo 2y ago

Exactly this. Especially for a currently failing company that got an incentive to NOT delete your data (because that's the only value they still have).

ethbr1 2y ago

Historically, yes. But don't the GDPR and CCPA et al. create liability around failure-to-delete after receiving a request?

goalonetwo 2y ago
Good luck proving that your data was not deleted. GDPR and CCPA etc made it easy to send a request for deletion that will most probably be a frontend gimmick. How much effort are they really going to put into going back in their backups and deleting all your entries? I'm pretty sure it must be the lowest roadmap priorities.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The financial penalties are pretty nasty. And it's amazing how financial liability has a way of getting things on a VP's feature radar that common sense doesn't. The reason it was haphazardly handled prior was that there was no liability. Who cared? (legally speaking) From working inside a T25 American retail company, I can say that we went top-to-bottom and rearchitected for traceability and hard deletes as a result of the CCPA.
- yreg 2y ago
  I have a feeling that it's also quite a difficult problem past some scale of infrastructure. If I ask Google to delete my data (EU citizen), I have trouble believing that they actually go through all of their cold storage backups where it was stored and make sure it's erased. At best I could believe that the process is designed in such a way that my soft-deleted data is unlikely to be recovered (intentionally or not) and maybe unlikely to be possible to link to my account.
  - anyfoo 2y ago
    What they should do (I have no idea what they do) is to encrypt every record belonging to a user with an individual key. Live records, backups, everything. If a user wishes to be deleted, that live key is simply obliterated, making any data the user owns unrecoverable. Since the key is not used for end to end encryption, and backends still have access to the data (as long as the key lives), it has different requirements on how it needs to be protected. The biggest challenge is backing up the key itself, as losing it means losing access to all the user’s data by design. But backing up and obliterating a single key is much, much easier than doing so for a whole set of loosely associated data across many databases.

davedx 2y ago

Agree, this is pointless. For one thing how many companies have the technical ability to remove specific records from all their database backups and logs? None that I’ve worked at

yreg 2y ago
Data usually leaks from production though, no? So in that perspective it's not pointless.
HowardStark 2y ago
Not that anyone is disagreeing, but it bears repeating: This is a lack of any real pressure from regulators, not a technical challenge. Or rather, there may be technical challenges but they absolutely can be overcome, and aren’t being tackled right now very simply because the business doesn’t care. As is so often the case, the business must be made to care.
- Muromec 2y ago
  GDPR mandates the ability to delete the data.
  - LegionMammal978 2y ago
    Not from all backups, or so I've heard.
    - samastur 2y ago
      You heard wrong. It doesn't have to be immediate though.
      - LegionMammal978 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41068881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41068881, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37941653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37941653, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085044, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34207919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34207919, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744415, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161041, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340987, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31051129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31051129, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31048828, ... My impression from all that I've heard is that you should have a backup retention policy, but otherwise there's no set upper bound on how long that may be. Not that the text of the GDPR breathes a word of it, though, everything's just a rat's nest of exemptions suggested by various authorities and other parties that haven't been tested in court.

Yhippa 2y ago

I feel like at best we'll get a soft delete

sfjailbird 2y ago

Not in the EU.

jakjak123 2y ago

I dno, but delete works most places I have worked, just because it saves money