Nope. I exported our data after they restored the backup and then we cancelled less than a month later. Like I obviously understand suspending our logins, but why would you ever delete someone's data when it's literally only 160 KB of text? The whole thing made zero sense.

After I met my now-fiancée on OkCupid, I deactivated my profile, turned off notifications and forgot about it for a while. A while later, I thought it be nice to revisit the first messages we sent to each other, only to find that... OkCupid had deleted both of our accounts. They didn't give me any advance warning, either, because I turned off notifications, remember? :^)

I'm still kinda salty about it. I understand why big services can't retain data indefinitely, but like... it's just a few KB of text, and that text happens to have a lot of sentimental value. Besides, OkCupid knows that I deactivated my account because I am a success story -- why not hold onto those profiles a bit longer? Or better yet, how about emailing an archive of those messages immediately when you click the "I'm leaving because I'm in a happy relationship now" button? /rant

I kind of agree - a company I used to work at used free Slack for years, then HipChat (until Atlassian killed it - with good reason), then converted to paid Slack, and all of our chat history was still there - even the old stuff that gets hidden as part of the free plan.

With GDPR, privacy regulations and data breach regulations sweeping the globe, holding onto unnecessary data is a huge liability. Getting rid of data you no longer have clear consent to store, or which you're unlikely to have a clear business need to continue storing, is a sign of a good company these days.

Not if the customer doesn't ask for it. As long as the user has a profile, was aware that PII is stored and doesn't request deletion, GDPR won't ever force you to delete information. Otherwise GMail would have to start deleting old emails as well.

True, but likely not this kind of data.

Yes, this kind of data. Your OkCupid account has all kinds of information about who you associate with.

That's true but it was stored there with your explicit consent. The GDPR is first and foremost concerned with data that is stored about you without your consent or with data that continues to be stored about you after your explicit request for deletion. Or incorrect data that you have requested to be removed. See the wikipedia page on the GDPR or a bunch of articles that I wrote about this subject.

If they had obtained the data without you supplying it freely then that would have been an entirely different matter, especially if it was used in ways that you did not consent to. But since that does not appear to be the case here the GDPR applies like it does to all data that is directly related to a data subject but continuing to store it on behalf of the user(s) that supplied it is not a problem.

Note that the user here is disappointed that their data which they consented to be kept is no longer there. This is a pretty clear indication that as far as they are concerned their expectation was the even with the GDPR up and running that such data would continue to be preserved as it is in almost every service that existed prior to may 2018.

It is precisely this kind of panicky thinking around the whole subject of the GDPR that gives these irrational responses, companies that suddenly no longer dare to mail you but you have to log in to their portal, which is secured by your email address and more of these totally weird constructs.

If they wanted to delete this data the better way would have been to positively contact the user (so that you know that they have received your message) to ask if their data should be deleted or not. That's good stewardship, just tossing it isn't.

I don't think people write code saying "if accountSize < 160kB { skipDelete() }" - THAT would make zero sense. So, the size is not relevant here. The process was likely to delete data after some event occurred, or lack of event occurred.

Someone somewhere got a promotion sooner because they lowered the slope of a line a little bit.

Or some overzealous engineer said hey guys let's delete all data 7 days after an account is canceled. This is called over optimizing.

Such a decision is just as likely to have come from the legal/compliance team as an engineer. Data you no longer have clear consent or a legitimate business need to store is a liability, and if you operate in Europe, potentially illegal to continue storing.

It’s amazing how much stupid shit we do to keep the legal guys happy while their bosses are busy engaging in <checks news headlines%> tax evasion, graft, bribery, fraud, embezzlement, illegal dumping, sexual harassment, sexual assault, statutory rape, solicitation to commit murder, and my personal favorite and I’m sure yours too: human trafficking.

But sure, we can break all of our users to avoid the possibility of you having to write some legal briefs and us paying a small fine for keeping data 7 days instead of three.

> why would you ever delete someone's data when it's literally only 160 KB of text?

Compliance? The contract has expired, so there’s no legal basis for them to keep your data?

Seems like that could be addressed with some fine print in the initial agreements. "In the event that you stop paying us, we may keep your data for up to N days unless directed otherwise by you"--or similar.

Why would they bother?

Even with GDPR, you can easily keep that data around for a few months or a year unless the customer requests deletion.