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Cool, cool cool cool. Nothing dystopian about that at all.

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As a software engineer I was a little shocked when I learned our company treats “Delete” buttons as a means to toggle Archived = 1 in the DB. Nothing is actually deleted. Sure we will anonymise the data after a certain time to be GDPR compliant but it would be trivial I guess to actually link that back to people.

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 24 points 1 week ago

I'm pretty sure GDPR requires websites to abide to user requests to delete their data. You may wish to review that with your company.

[-] SanguineBrah@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 week ago

The GDPR applies to data pertaining to an identifiable person. Anonymised data is more or less equivalent to deleted data as far as the regulation is concerned. Source: I was a DPO for 5 years.

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

Oh, I see. Indeed anonymised data should be fine under GDPR. However it is often very difficult to anonymise data. Some things are easy to anonymise, other are very complex.

For a small company who does not mainly work with data, the easiest solution to comply with GDPR is indeed just deleting the data altogether.

[-] SanguineBrah@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes, there a concept of "pseudonymous" data in some of the guidance, which refers to anonymous data which, when taken together, could identify the person - even if some of that data is not held by the data controller. Under those circumstances seemingly anonymous data can fall under the regulation although most companies are very unlikely to consider such nuance in their data policies.

[-] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

The org i used to work for had to develop a special process to delete user data upon request, it was not an easy process in dynamics365

if you want something deleted you best destroy the hard disk yourself lol

[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

There's no independent audit for GDPR compliance so the only way to know would be if someone whistleblows. There are also so many loopholes that allows to keep the data like "to prevent further abuse" or "some legal reason".

So if reddit bans your account they can keep all data and you can't do anything about it even with GDPR.

[-] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 points 1 week ago

Don't GDPR deletion requests only require deleting personal data, and not public posts?

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

Are you advising breaking the law just because nobody checks?

[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I'm saying corporations break the law if nobody checks - why wouldn't they?

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

That happens. Still, many companies do not. Some companies are unaware of the legislation.

I was informing one worker of a company of one such law.

Many companies do not break the law even though there are no controls just because that is the right thing to do.

[-] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago

That's basically how deleting data from a hard drive works too.

[-] Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Not quite, deletion from a hard drive also unflags the space the data was located at as being in use, so it will be overwritten eventually so long as the drive continues to have things written to it. Simply flagging something as being archived means that information will remain on the server indefinitely, the exact opposite of what is intended by a delete button.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That’s why we use the shred command, then you get random data over it at the start.

[-] YerbaYerba@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

Depending on your media that may not really destroy the data. SSDs do wear leveling and it might just write new blocks and reuse the old ones later.

[-] CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So, what you're saying is, to truly delete data from an ssd you need to do manual wear leveling with a belt sender.

[-] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 1 week ago

My current workplace doesn't have for foresight to do that. Delete fully deletes immediately and without confirmation. Oh and the backups have been broken for years

On the upside, recent changes in leadership and on the team made it so we finally have the political will and talent in the right places to actually put effort into fixing backups but they have a lot of technical debt to sift through in fixing the last folks' mistakes and oversights

[-] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It'd work if it was encrypted and you threw away the encryption key on delete

this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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