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The famous US data delete that is just a "soft delete". Maybe different in California. In the EU with GDPR, companies are required by law to have all your data

The famous US data delete that is just a "soft delete". Maybe different in California. In the EU with GDPR, companies are required by law to have all your data deleted after a month from user deletion request.

genewitch 2y ago
How is this done in practice? Do you all just do backups different? What percentage of deleted data still exists, obfuscated as user1029387 in the tables? With "deleted" boolean column obviously set to true. The very idea that it's possible to delete all your data from any service not running everything on tmpfs is funny to me.
- jajko 2y ago
  Its not even funny, its just dangerously naïve, on hacker news from all. I can bet half of my salary that absolutely none of those records are deleted forever, and even anonymization is probably very soft and reversible, if done at all. I work at a bank, one of major ones. We have various regulations stating to keep client records for 5 years. We have trainings that specifically say that we shouldn't keep client records longer than 5 years (additional costs, generally just a risk without any reward). Guess what - main core banking system's DB holding all client data and transactions is ever-growing, no data were ever purged from it in past 30 years. Nor will it ever happen in future. Too complex, nobody owns removal process, nobody rally cares about those data. This is situation with 0 good reasons to keep data. 23 has massive valuation reasons to keep them. Its not what it can be used for now but the vast unknown potential in future, of data that are inheritable and thus useful for hundreds/thousands of years. Don't hold your/parent's breath, be reasonable in current climate.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    someone elsewhere mentioned they use a key (encryption key) per user and just change the key, but A) i don't buy that, how do you prove you deleted a key? and if the user maintains the key and can revoke both their and the service's access to their data, lots of users will do this accidentally. Look at, say, matrix from a few years back, it'd constantly hose your keys and you'd have to attempt to restore from a backup key, but not that key, that's the first key - and apparently you accidentally clicked "backup key" again at some point and now all your stuff is that new key, even though you didn't specify you wanted a new key, you just clicked "back up key" to see what it did. Also i "permanently" deleted a facebook account 2 years ago, and through a quirk on a cellphone facebook immediately brought the account back like it had never been deleted. I issued another "permanent delete" for that account a week ago, but i bet dollars to doughnuts in 5 weeks i will still be able to "oops i forgot my password, send me an SMS" will reactivate the account again. If facebook can't or won't do it, i don't really think anyone handles this correctly. Except people like me that store everything that users upload in tmpfs, and whenever i feel like it, i bounce the box. Good luck recovering any PII from that system. Unfortunately it doesn't have access control (there is no access to the system - that is, ssh, login, shell, whatever - from outside.), so i can't claim hipaa compliance. That and it doesn't log, so after a bounce i can't even verify who did what. Most users won't stand for this kind of thing, but the users that can, depend on my random reboots if they forget a delete key (usually reloading the tab will "forget" the delete key.)
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
I'm sure the fact that it's "required by law" has them quaking in their boots.

genewitch 2y ago

How is this done in practice? Do you all just do backups different? What percentage of deleted data still exists, obfuscated as user1029387 in the tables? With "deleted" boolean column obviously set to true. The very idea that it's possible to delete all your data from any service not running everything on tmpfs is funny to me.

jajko 2y ago
Its not even funny, its just dangerously naïve, on hacker news from all. I can bet half of my salary that absolutely none of those records are deleted forever, and even anonymization is probably very soft and reversible, if done at all. I work at a bank, one of major ones. We have various regulations stating to keep client records for 5 years. We have trainings that specifically say that we shouldn't keep client records longer than 5 years (additional costs, generally just a risk without any reward). Guess what - main core banking system's DB holding all client data and transactions is ever-growing, no data were ever purged from it in past 30 years. Nor will it ever happen in future. Too complex, nobody owns removal process, nobody rally cares about those data. This is situation with 0 good reasons to keep data. 23 has massive valuation reasons to keep them. Its not what it can be used for now but the vast unknown potential in future, of data that are inheritable and thus useful for hundreds/thousands of years. Don't hold your/parent's breath, be reasonable in current climate.
- genewitch 2y ago
  someone elsewhere mentioned they use a key (encryption key) per user and just change the key, but A) i don't buy that, how do you prove you deleted a key? and if the user maintains the key and can revoke both their and the service's access to their data, lots of users will do this accidentally. Look at, say, matrix from a few years back, it'd constantly hose your keys and you'd have to attempt to restore from a backup key, but not that key, that's the first key - and apparently you accidentally clicked "backup key" again at some point and now all your stuff is that new key, even though you didn't specify you wanted a new key, you just clicked "back up key" to see what it did. Also i "permanently" deleted a facebook account 2 years ago, and through a quirk on a cellphone facebook immediately brought the account back like it had never been deleted. I issued another "permanent delete" for that account a week ago, but i bet dollars to doughnuts in 5 weeks i will still be able to "oops i forgot my password, send me an SMS" will reactivate the account again. If facebook can't or won't do it, i don't really think anyone handles this correctly. Except people like me that store everything that users upload in tmpfs, and whenever i feel like it, i bounce the box. Good luck recovering any PII from that system. Unfortunately it doesn't have access control (there is no access to the system - that is, ssh, login, shell, whatever - from outside.), so i can't claim hipaa compliance. That and it doesn't log, so after a bounce i can't even verify who did what. Most users won't stand for this kind of thing, but the users that can, depend on my random reboots if they forget a delete key (usually reloading the tab will "forget" the delete key.)

zeroonetwothree 2y ago

I'm sure the fact that it's "required by law" has them quaking in their boots.