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Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

cnbc.com

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Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#12
post #10

Sounds normal to me. Is there any company that deletes their customers' purchase histories? And doesn't the IRS prescribe that this kind of information should be in the books?

This is not the purchase history of Google product/services, it's anything you buy and use your gmail address. Example, if you use your gmail account for Amazon, your entire purchase history will be stored by Google and you can't delete it.

And yours isn't the first comment in this thread who's question can be answered if they bothered reading the article. Some are quick to defend the actions of a corporation.

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#13
This sounds weird. When CNBC broke the story a month back, I'd :

1. gone around deleting every invoice from my GMail inbox

2. Noticed it wasn't getting removed after waiting for 24 hours.

3. Reached out to the reporter mentioning google might be not deleting it properly.

4. Waiting a couple more days and calling off the alarm when google did finally delete it.

I wrote about it at https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/06/01/cleaning-google-purchase.... My purchase history still shows 0 results, more than a month after my cleaning spree.

3 weeks still sounds too long for this information to linger around.

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#14

This sounds weird. When CNBC broke the story a month back, I'd : 1. gone around deleting every invoice from my GMail inbox 2. Noticed it wasn't getting removed after waiting for 24 hours. 3. Reached out to the reporter mentioning google might be not deleting it properly. 4. Waiting a couple more days and calling off the alarm when google did finally delete it. I wrote about it at https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/06/01/c…

With all these we deleted it... we promise... does anyone not believe that they have that list stored there with your e-mail address attached to it and now you can't see it?

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#15
post #2

Is Office 365 any better - or am I stuck running my own mail server if I really want privacy?

Office 365 is a paid product, so I would hope so. I also don't recall them trying to be your personal assistant.

A first step to the answer to that question would probably be to compare all the terms and contracts.

If you really really want your privacy you're better off running your own. But then a lot of your contacts probably use a provider you didn't trust hosting your email, so there goes a large chunk of that privacy again...

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#17
post #8

This is silly. Of course Google still has your purchase information if you haven't deleted the email. It's like complaining your email search index can't be deleted without deleting the indexed emails.

They already deleted the emails. From the article > When I click on an individual purchase and try to remove it — it says I can do this by deleting the email, after all — it just redirects to my inbox and not to the original email message for me to delete, since that email no longer exists.

As the top comment already noted, the email still exists in Trash, where messages get removed 30 days after they are deleted unless the user manually empties their trash. Emails in trash are obviously still indexed. (They show up when I search for "in:trash".) There are multiple other people who have said that deleting emails removes them from their purchase history.

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#18
The reporter never says they deleted the e-mails from their trash, and the "3 week" time period is less than the 30 days it takes for the trash to automatically empty.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the entire, innocent, explanation here.

(I still think you should be able to turn off purchase history separately...)

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#19
post #14

This sounds weird. When CNBC broke the story a month back, I'd : 1. gone around deleting every invoice from my GMail inbox 2. Noticed it wasn't getting removed after waiting for 24 hours. 3. Reached out to the reporter mentioning google might be not deleting it properly. 4. Waiting a couple more days and calling off the alarm when google did finally delete it. I wrote about it at https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/06/01/c…

With all these we deleted it... we promise... does anyone not believe that they have that list stored there with your e-mail address attached to it and now you can't see it?

If anything, I’m more afraid of instant frictionless deletes - in my experience, they’re almost always implemented by setting a “this is totally deleted” flag and then scheduling a job to do the actual deletion. (Not that this is inherently an evil practice! In many contexts, users expect to be able to fix accidental deletions and will get really mad if they can’t.)

Re: Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted

#20
post #3
post #2

Is Office 365 any better - or am I stuck running my own mail server if I really want privacy?

Fastmail

I like everything about Fastmail, but they're Australian and Australia seems to be one of the worst jurisdictions when it comes to data privacy. See this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434
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