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It's fairly understandable that delete from a retailer is hard. In many places retailers are under obligation to store records relating to transactions for thin

by buro9 13y ago

It's fairly understandable that delete from a retailer is hard. In many places retailers are under obligation to store records relating to transactions for things like tax compliance, agreements with credit providers, anti-fraud and accounting laws. i.e. Amazon What does delete even mean in these circumstances? The best they're able to do is just remove your public profile (if such a thing exists) whilst leaving everything else intact. It's also understandable that collaborative works have no real delete (as the end user perceives it). The very nature of a collaborative work means that removing some contribution from the past could alter the work as it stands today. i.e. Wikipedia What's really surprising are the media outlets on the list with the high level of difficulty. The EU data protection laws only permit a company to retain that data which is necessary to provide a service, for as long as the service is provided or the company is obliged (by law) to keep the information. Those outlets (Gawker) seem to hide under the collaborative works stuff, but if you've an account but never made a comment then deletion shouldn't be objected to. General rules: If there was a monetary transaction they're going to keep your info but might delete your public profile. If it's a collaborative work you might get your profile deleted but all of your contributions will remain as a public record. If it's an interaction with the government you're never going to get it deleted.

zmk_ 13y ago
What they can and should do is remove all you data that relates to you excluding invoices (which should just copy your data and not simply reference it) and logs that you need to keep per some law.
- blowski 13y ago
  Exactly. Since I can buy on some internet retailers without creating an account, there is no logical reason why another retailer can't delete my account. I understand that they need to store the invoice, but that could be stored separately from the marketing database.
kijin 13y ago
> What does delete even mean in these circumstances? The best they're able to do is just remove your public profile (if such a thing exists) whilst leaving everything else intact. They should delete everything except what they can't. And I think the same should happen by default with collaborative services like Wikipedia as well (see below). > The very nature of a collaborative work means that removing some contribution from the past could alter the work as it stands today. i.e. Wikipedia Collaboration only makes it more difficult to erase all traces of your use of a service, because other people expect to keep your edits in their timelines. But this has nothing to do with whether or not you should be able to delete your public profile and username/password. It's very easy to delete Github accounts, but any contribution you made to anyone else's repository will continue to exist and have your name in it (because you can't rewrite Git history without breaking a lot of things). That's exactly how anybody with basic knowledge of Git would expect things to work. You can delete your account and your own repositories, but your contributions and other people's forks will remain. With services that don't rely on Git, it's even easier to rewrite history, so there's not even any need to keep your name. For example, Wikipedia could just display a grayed-out [deleted] where it would normally display your name & a link to your profile. Or treat it as an anonymous edit. Or whatever else makes the most sense given their architecture. As long as the ToS clearly states what gets deleted and what doesn't, I don't see any problem with partial deletions. And of course there are always CoD letters and other legal mechanisms for circumstances where you really want to make things disappear.

by buro9 13y ago

zmk_ 13y ago

What they can and should do is remove all you data that relates to you excluding invoices (which should just copy your data and not simply reference it) and logs that you need to keep per some law.

blowski 13y ago
Exactly. Since I can buy on some internet retailers without creating an account, there is no logical reason why another retailer can't delete my account. I understand that they need to store the invoice, but that could be stored separately from the marketing database.

kijin 13y ago

> What does delete even mean in these circumstances? The best they're able to do is just remove your public profile (if such a thing exists) whilst leaving everything else intact. They should delete everything except what they can't. And I think the same should happen by default with collaborative services like Wikipedia as well (see below). > The very nature of a collaborative work means that removing some contribution from the past could alter the work as it stands today. i.e. Wikipedia Collaboration only makes it more difficult to erase all traces of your use of a service, because other people expect to keep your edits in their timelines. But this has nothing to do with whether or not you should be able to delete your public profile and username/password. It's very easy to delete Github accounts, but any contribution you made to anyone else's repository will continue to exist and have your name in it (because you can't rewrite Git history without breaking a lot of things). That's exactly how anybody with basic knowledge of Git would expect things to work. You can delete your account and your own repositories, but your contributions and other people's forks will remain. With services that don't rely on Git, it's even easier to rewrite history, so there's not even any need to keep your name. For example, Wikipedia could just display a grayed-out [deleted] where it would normally display your name & a link to your profile. Or treat it as an anonymous edit. Or whatever else makes the most sense given their architecture. As long as the ToS clearly states what gets deleted and what doesn't, I don't see any problem with partial deletions. And of course there are always CoD letters and other legal mechanisms for circumstances where you really want to make things disappear.