I don’t have any faith that I’m going to be protected from current / future persecution because I ticked / didn’t tick some box on some control panel on some service provided by Morally Bankrupt MegaCorp.
If your data is supposed to have been deleted but they ignored it, they have it illegally.
If someone from the state wants to prosecute you and requests the data, the company wouldn't own up to having it, because they're not allowed have it.
Why would they lie to you, and then sell themselves out to the state?
Fine, they might keep it, but not in order to assist in prosecutions lol
That is they look for loopholes and places they can use dark patterns to nudge users into giving up more data. They stay within the rules but push the envelope of what’s acceptable to the legal limit.
It’s not that they are holding onto data specifically to support prosecutions it’s that they hold onto data because that’s what Google do.
They’d hand that over because they have it and to not cooperate would unnecessarily cause them business friction they could easily avoid.
I don't think that would go down well for the prosecution if you ever ended up in court.
The reality is that 99.99% of users never even open their account settings, let alone micromanage their identity's state across dozens of platforms. Google wouldn't even notice if all hn readers deleted all of their data and deactivated their accounts tomorrow.
The most reasonable thing for them to do is to actually delete the data, and avoid all headaches. It's the more profitable move. You look like good guys and avoid legal problems.
If you could find the right button I’m sure it would delete the data...
except that it’s down the UI equivalent three flights of stairs to the basement, behind a filing cabinet in front of a locked door with a sign on saying “Beware of the leopard”.
Oh and every tracking feature is on by default even if you’re not logged in.
Even then, the UI's for these things usually aren't actually that darkpatterned. Once you get down the first dark tunnel, it tends to open up quite well.
I think we ought to assume Big Corp doesn't delete anything and shares that not-deleted data with, at least, the Five Eyes.
As someone who supported a major database in Google some five years ago: the amount of development effort that went into the GDPR compliance (we haven't even heard that name then, only that the EU is brewing a law that requires us to be able to delete data) was very surprising. So at least one corp does actually delete the data correctly.
But the boiling frog analogy is something that just isn't true:
> "According to Dr. George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians, the National Museum of Natural History, 'Well that's, may I say, bullshit. If a frog had a means of getting out, it certainly would get out. And I cannot imagine that anything dropped in boiling water would not be scalded and die from the injuries.'"
> "Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says, 'If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot -- they don't sit still for you.'"
> "Vic's (Dr. Victor Hutchison of the University of Oklahoma) answer was as follows: 'The legend is entirely incorrect! The 'critical thermal maxima' of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so. Naturally, if the frog were not allowed to escape it would eventually begin to show signs of heat stress, muscular spasms, heat rigor, and death.'"
Quotes from: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=758865
Additional info: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-b...
I imagine that even if you trust the platform holder to handle the data responsibly, you might still worry what someone could do to you if it fell into the wrong hands due to a hack, or some future government that might abuse it.