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How do I permanently delete my account?

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Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#141

Post by virgilp »

frik wrote: post #66
Steeeve wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit naive to think that a service provider would scrub their systems on individual requests. It's not practical to perform a delete in some environments. It's certainly not practical to go through backup files and delete references in others. Everybody goes through a data recovery scenario at some point. What you should expect is best effort. Nobody is going to re-train their neural networks that reference…

The single source of truths, all the core Facebook users data (except messages) is stored in MySQL cluster. The issue you describe is that the same data is also cached in Memcached and by other means. But deleting is entirely possible, though it's against their business model, so they make real deleting as hard to find and do as possible, and scare people away with info like "you cannot register again". Training of n…

> make real deleting as hard to find and do as possible, and scare people away with info like "you cannot register again".

They do that? And is that legal? How will facebook prevent me from registering again, if they deleted all PII that they had on me? That'd be clear proof that they didn't respect my GDPR request for deletion, and I could sue them easily.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#142

Post by kgwxd »

vidyesh wrote: post #77
a254613e wrote: post #73

It's kinda ironic that all the people here are complaining that facebook might not actually really delete literally every single bit of information that you have, while hacker news doesn't allow you to edit your comments, delete them, or delete your profile. This sort of functionality should exist on every platform that even has accounts. Does anyone know if GDPR (or similar law in the future) will actually force HN…

I understand your sentiment but I don't think deleting comments would make sites like these (community driven) appealing. Missing comments creates a big hole to a comment train, look at reddit. Missing/Deleted comments make the whole comment tree below it quite meaningless. HN would invite a lot of trolls with this an would make it really difficult to create a submission archive that makes sense. Now I don't know how…

There's nothing sacred about HN discussions. Privacy is way more important, even a matter of life and death for some.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#143

Post by kgwxd »

onion2k wrote: post #117
bogomipz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it ironic, you are user "a254613e" that's literally all anybody on NF knows about you. That's pretty anonymous no? HN has no real name policy or even requirement of a verified email to participate.

That's great if you sign up with the intention of posting anonymously, but if you post here for years using your name or your chosen alias (eg I'm onion2k on everything; it's trivial to find out who I am), and then decide you don't want to be associated with your HN history it's not so helpful. Also forensic tools are clever enough to take someone's comment history and use the little information in there to work out…

Whats the strong argument someone's internet history should be available as a record? I've never heard one.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#144

Post by bogomipz »

roel_v wrote: post #126
bogomipz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it ironic, you are user "a254613e" that's literally all anybody on NF knows about you. That's pretty anonymous no? HN has no real name policy or even requirement of a verified email to participate.

That's pretty naive. When you have an account for a while, a lot can be deduced from the comments you make - both from what you say, how you say it, and when.

There's nothing at all naive about self-censoring certain personal information and modulating your behavior. Guess what, the physical world is the same way.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#145

Post by Steeeve »

justhw wrote: post #76
Steeeve wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit naive to think that a service provider would scrub their systems on individual requests. It's not practical to perform a delete in some environments. It's certainly not practical to go through backup files and delete references in others. Everybody goes through a data recovery scenario at some point. What you should expect is best effort. Nobody is going to re-train their neural networks that reference…

> Then there's the practicality of things. If you delete your account here on HN, would you expect all conversations that you participated in to be removed? All references to your comments? Or all comments that you made removed? There's been few debates here about the definition of to 'delete' which I won't get into. However, as a user, it rubs me wrong when companies equate simple username disassociation with deleti…

> A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts.

What major sites behave in a way that you find acceptable?

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#146

Post by e12e »

dnt404-1 wrote: post #108
e12e wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how does this apply to logs? It's common for web servers by default to record urls visited and IP addresses. Would that be legal without explicit consent? I'm not certain on the details, but in eg Norway that is already much in line with the GDPR ip addresses are considered personal data , and as such regulated. However, there are provisions for storing such information for auditing purposes (both security, tec…

Can one collect data without "personal data" by anonymizing those specific attributes (ip, phone number)? Also, say, I want to collect data about the performance of the web application. Can that be collected, or does it require explicit consent as well?

Only if you can/do meaningfully anonymize the data. Eg, knowing the subnet of most/all Norwegian isps, it's trivial to recover ips that are simply hashed (probably even with salt), similarly Norwegian phone numbers are only eight digits, so any kind of deterministic mapping is likely to be too trivial to actually amount to anonymization.

Also rember that one of the goals is to avoid illicit linking - so being able to verify that ip n.n.n.n is the same as slow_hash(salt+other-ip) won't fly as "not storing".

In general, anonymizing data in sparse populations is tricky - where "small" can be quite large. Just imagine building a bitfield of variables like: sex,age +/-50;2 bits. Rough location (easily 6 bits), browser (2 bits), mobile? 1 bit - that's already 12 bits etc. See also NYC taxi dataset, eg (not the article I had in mind, but seems to cover similar points):

https://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-star...

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#147

Post by e12e »

tscs37 wrote: post #103
e12e wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone know if GDPR (or similar law in the future) will actually force HN and other sites that don't have this feature, to remove accounts, at least EU ones, upon request? As far as I know, the GDPR is more of a clarification (along with some explicit guidelines for fines), than it is new legislation - so hn and similar sites would already be in breach, if they didn't allow the deletion of all profile data. I'…

>But afaik hn does no business in the EU - so it's not clear what sanctions would be applicable. Since EU citizens are registered users, it applies.

Sure, it technically applies - but I doubt it will have any effect. Compare it to hacking across border where there is no extradition. At least until some form of GDPR is rolled into international trade treaties.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#148

Post by gdwatson »

asdfgadsfgasfdg wrote: post #65
gdwatson wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud regulations promoting user privacy, even if this seems heavy handed. But does anyone else wonder about the implications of applying that regulation to those who collect data on EU residents whether they operate in the EU or not? Has the US State Department stated a position on the matter?

It is a similar concept to export of physical goods into a country/trade block. Either comply with the local regulations on quality or your goods will not be allowed. The US State Department does not really get to have a stated position other than diplomatic.

"It is a similar concept to export of physical goods into a country/trade block. Either comply with the local regulations on quality or your goods will not be allowed."

That analogy is what I take issue with. It's clear that Facebook, selling ads to European buyers, is doing business there. But is every random web site with a few European users? Does putting up a web site suddenly mean you're doing business in every country in the world, subject to the jurisdiction of all of them simultaneously?

"The US State Department does not really get to have a stated position other than diplomatic."

Diplomacy is what it does, and its diplomatic position on trade issues is relevant.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#149

Post by tscs37 »

e12e wrote: post #147
tscs37 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But afaik hn does no business in the EU - so it's not clear what sanctions would be applicable. Since EU citizens are registered users, it applies.

Sure, it technically applies - but I doubt it will have any effect . Compare it to hacking across border where there is no extradition . At least until some form of GDPR is rolled into international trade treaties.

If you never set foot onto EU soil, you can safely ignore the Gdpr. You might be blacklisted by EU ISPs though.

Re: How do I permanently delete my account?

#150

Post by PeterisP »

kelnos wrote: post #132
yorwba wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts. Do they though? Maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but I thought the GDPR only applies to personally identifying information, not all data ever generated by a user. So by disassociating the user name and the post, the post has suddenly ceased to be personally identifying information and no longer nee…

That's difficult, though. What if the contents of a post provide identifying details of the owner of the account?

IMHO that should be treated in the same manner that if the contents of my post provide identifying details of the to-be-deleted person.
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