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

Post by perl4ever » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

dorgo wrote: post #84

perl4ever wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work where (not a service for the general public) there was an "is deleted" flag for everything, but every now and then a client would insist that data be really deleted, and depending on who it was and how they asked, we might go and do it, which was a huge hassle and would cause no end of problems down the line. On the other hand, "is deleted" flags end up causing issues when you forget to put "where not…

>On the other hand, "is deleted" flags end up causing issues when you forget to put "where not is_deleted" in your queries. My solution would be a view for every table. Are there drawbacks? Other solutions?

Post by DevX101 » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

vincvinc wrote: post #92

DevX101 wrote: post #64

Doing real deletes on user accounts is a surprisingly challenging problem and I'd be willing to bet very few companies do real deletes where all of your data is wiped permanently from the company. For legal and financial reasons, companies often need to keep track of historical user activity. If a company states in their investor quarterly report that they had 1M active users, they better be able to prove it in an au…

Soft deletion violates the GDPR. Read article 17: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/ And previous HN discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366050

Post by pinusc » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #86

DevX101 wrote: post #64

Doing real deletes on user accounts is a surprisingly challenging problem and I'd be willing to bet very few companies do real deletes where all of your data is wiped permanently from the company. For legal and financial reasons, companies often need to keep track of historical user activity. If a company states in their investor quarterly report that they had 1M active users, they better be able to prove it in an au…

There is also a user-valuable reason to not do hard deletes. Doing a soft delete prevents another malicious user from immediately reclaiming your now-available ID and pretending to be you.

Post by ornornor » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

thewebcount wrote: post #96

ornornor wrote: post #35

Netflix does that too. You can’t delete your account so they just append a string like “csr_morgan” in the domain so that your account is “deleted” (you can’t login anymore, because your email address technically doesn’t have an account anymore) and you can re-register with your email later if you wish. But I’d you use the altered email and the same password, everything is still there. Pretty sure this goes against G…

What happens when you re-register with the same email address and then later cancel again?

Post by RandomBacon » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

DevX101 wrote: post #98

pinusc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always hard delete all the data _and_ keep track of deleted users so that their usernames can't be reused. Once you have hard delete, this solution is almost trivial and by far the most user-valuable.

> keep track of deleted users so that their usernames can't be reused This seems to violate GPDR, no? Attacker attempts to create an account (say: victim@gmail.com) on AshleyMadison and is prevented because the server tracked past users. Attacker could them demonstrate victim@gmail.com was at one point a user on AshleyMadison.com