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Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

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Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#41

Post by cptskippy »

londt8 wrote: post #28
inopinatus wrote: post #25

I’d bet (a small amount of) money they have no ability to delete accounts at all, and it goes all the way down to foreign key constraints introduced by a well-meaning but inexperienced developer that unnecessarily couple the accounts table to many other records.

Why not just anonymize the data instead? Not using foreign key constraint just for the sake of GDPR sounds weird.

> Not using foreign key constraint just for the sake of GDPR sounds weird.

That isn't what he said.

He said their inability to delete an account is due to poor design of their data schema by a well intentioned developer.

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#42

Post by bagacrap »

polote wrote: post #9
basicplus2 wrote: post #2

"instead of actually deleting it, they simply appended '1000' to both the username and the email address. anyone could thus create an email address with that suffix and request a password request to access my info."

not an issue as long as there is no tld which ends with 1000 though

"the number was appended to local-part, not the domain. I found out by going back to a tab where my session was still valid but the account dropdown had updated with the new name. Profile settings revealed the email."

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#43

Post by unicornfinder »

londt8 wrote: post #28
inopinatus wrote: post #25

I’d bet (a small amount of) money they have no ability to delete accounts at all, and it goes all the way down to foreign key constraints introduced by a well-meaning but inexperienced developer that unnecessarily couple the accounts table to many other records.

Why not just anonymize the data instead? Not using foreign key constraint just for the sake of GDPR sounds weird.

That and why not allow null for the foreign key constraint and set it to nullify upon deletion? Or indeed, anonymise data.

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#44

Post by neovive »

emodendroket wrote: post #37
inopinatus wrote: post #25

I’d bet (a small amount of) money they have no ability to delete accounts at all, and it goes all the way down to foreign key constraints introduced by a well-meaning but inexperienced developer that unnecessarily couple the accounts table to many other records.

In that case it seems simpler to introduce an IsDeleted flag than to have a convention that 1000 goes on the end of the name.

This reminds me of a good use case for the Laravel Soft Deletes: https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/eloquent#soft-deleting.

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#45

Post by marcofatica »

neovive wrote: post #44
emodendroket wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case it seems simpler to introduce an IsDeleted flag than to have a convention that 1000 goes on the end of the name.

This reminds me of a good use case for the Laravel Soft Deletes: https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/eloquent#soft-deleting .

love this feature so much

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#46

Post by anticensor »

the-dude wrote: post #33
paulcole wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still love the story of the Pinboard guy’s approach to invoices. If you ask for an invoice, he sends you a blank one and tells you to just fill it out however you want.

In The Netherlands there are legal requirements for invoices.

US has too, they are lower but not nonexistent. Blank invoice is not a valid invoice in the states either.

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#47

Post by petercooper »

the-dude wrote: post #33
paulcole wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still love the story of the Pinboard guy’s approach to invoices. If you ask for an invoice, he sends you a blank one and tells you to just fill it out however you want.

In The Netherlands there are legal requirements for invoices.

Same in the UK, but for instances where you can't get a fully valid invoice, you can either "self invoice" (so the "fill in your own invoice" approach) or just whatever receipt you get as long as you feel happy defending it to a tax inspector later on.

If you use US companies for services in a European business, you are almost certainly going to have invoices every month that don't meet EU regulations at all and you just have to make it work.

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#48

Post by petercooper »

paulcole wrote: post #36
the-dude wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In The Netherlands there are legal requirements for invoices.

He said in his tweet about this that when he does it to Europeans (specifically Germans, I think) they just get even madder. I mean great if there are legal requirements for invoices, but who enforces them, how likely is enforcement, and what’s the end result for a US-based company with no physical presence in The Netherlands?

The real issue is with the local (European) company when they claim the expense against profits and the tax inspector turns their nose up at the invoice/receipt.

Being in the UK, we tend to work on a system where things are taken in context and you can defend such decisions. Maybe other tax regimes are more restrictive, but the British way is always that you can have a debate with authorities and usually they will see sense in your reasoning if you're not trying to defraud them.

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#49

Post by gentleman11 »

It’s odious that it’s impossible to delete accounts except in rare circumstances. Ever try? All anybody does is temporarily disable them unless you go through an hour with their tech support. Dark pattern at best, holding on to your data forever to continue selling it at worst

Re: Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address

#50

Post by Traster »

gentleman11 wrote: post #49

It’s odious that it’s impossible to delete accounts except in rare circumstances. Ever try? All anybody does is temporarily disable them unless you go through an hour with their tech support. Dark pattern at best, holding on to your data forever to continue selling it at worst

It's things exactly like this that were a damn good reason the EU implemented GDPR.
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