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Will they delete it for real? I feel like many companies either just hide the data or have it sitting in older backups, leaving everyone’s privacy vulnerable.
by blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Will they delete it for real? I feel like many companies either just hide the data or have it sitting in older backups, leaving everyone’s privacy vulnerable.
- Cyclone_ 2y agoI usually wonder if they do that as well. In some cases it may be hard to depending on how data is stored. In vertica, a database I worked with would never truly delete data on disk.
- delusional 2y agoThat seems like nonsense. Software cannot constrain the physical world. I could touch the bits on the drive itself, or I could physically destroy the hard-drive. Both would "truly delete" the data.
- dietr1ch 2y agoGood luck deleting data from my 5th backup drives that I didn't tell you about. It's not hard because destroying a hard drive is hard, it's hard because you need to find not one, but all of the drives that are likely replicated and distributed around the globe already if you ever intended to do business with that data.
- post-it 2y agoIt's not a technical problem to solve, it's a legal one. If there is a crushing penalty if data that was supposed to be deleted shows up one day, companies will find a way to delete it.
- im3w1l 2y agoOne issue I foresee is that you can't legislate bugs away.
- post-it 2y agoA bug is just a mistake, and the legal system already deals with mistakes in a variety of ways.
- okanat 2y agoUmm you can. You can force companies to pass their code through an examination (even by a third party) and define a procedure of ensuring strict data hygiene. If they cannot pass each year, they will be subject to fines.
- Y-bar 2y agoOnly marking as “deleted” while indefinitely keeping it is illegal in the EU/EEA. The GDPR _requires_ a hard deletion in cases like this, but allows a grace period of a few weeks for the deletion to propagate throughout systems.
- adastra22 2y agoThere are backup systems that are write-only. What’s to be done then?
- dboreham 2y agoThe acid bath.
- post-it 2y agoIt's imprudent to use technology that makes it impossible to comply with the law.
- polskibus 2y agoYou could replay this backup, and skip problematic record when writing new copy of the backup. Delete old backup. What’s important is to keep such log of „records to be deleted from backup”.
- adastra22 2y agoThat cost real money and requires literally throwing out the old backup (which may or may not be destroyable). Think optical media and stuff like that.
- Y-bar 2y agoThe GDPR was proposed and discussed in 2014, it was voted on in 2016, and went into effect in 2018. As 2025 is at the door, what excuses are there really to use a non-compliant tech stack when handling personal data?
- 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pfoof 2y agoNow imagine backups stored on tapes. How many companies would resort to rewinding all of them in search of this single record.
- rollcat 2y agoEasy: - Rotate old tapes to store the freshest backup (according to retention policy) - Store row ID for each deletion request - Replay deletions during restore Either way you want (or already have) a scrubbing procedure to import production data into a staging environment, so this is not a technical issue.
- pfoof 2y agoYeah during restore. But is this still compliant with GDPR deletion request when you still physically have access to a copy of user's data? I mean, sure, it's very theoretical, you can't prove that Meta or Google doesn't delete your data until a leak.
- onetokeoverthe 2y agoAgree. The file locker site i use said my account was deactivated due to inactivity. But after a simple email pw reset all my uploads are back online. Makes me aware any deletion i do is probably NOT done server side.
- oytis 2y agoAt least before GDPR it was a common wisdom among backend people that deleting things is just not worth it. I remember when I joined an otherwise cloud-focused team as an embedded engineer and suggested that we add a way to delete an account it was made clear to me that I am asking for an impossible thing. I hope GDPR has managed to change something
- onetokeoverthe 2y agoRight. Most all users want the restore option much more than a clean delete.
- tim333 2y agoI'd quite like if they deleted my iris data as they've given me about $300 so far and if so I could open another account or two and do it over.