But the overall post and the double buried ledes make me question the degree to which we’re getting the whole story.
Right or wrong, those messages look like very standard AWS-speak for "this is your mistake, not ours".
I have no idea if that's a reasonable stance or not, but I _will_ say that AWS's internal culture contributes to this sort of bad press. If they would respond to their customers with even a trace of empathy and ownership, this post would likely never have been written.
Maybe the mistake was inventing non-immutable data storage?
There is no “wipe everything immediately” button.
> According to them, AWS MENA was running some kind of proof of concept on “dormant” and “low-activity” accounts. Multiple accounts were affected, not just mine.
If AWS has a 90-day closure policy, why was this account deleted so quickly?
Or at least, if it isn't, it certainly should be.
Besides, what would be the potential benefit of such a hypothetical script? The author mentions "a bill under $200," so that's the upper limit on how much it costs AWS to keep the author's whole data. If I was working there and a coworker said "Hey I created a script that can save the company $200 by finding a defunct (but paying) customer and wiping out their data!", I'd have replied "What the fuck is wrong with you."
But here is the thing: no one from AWS has given me an official explanation. Not during the 20-day support hell, not after termination, not even when I asked directly: “Does my data still exist?” Just a slow drip of templated replies, evasions, and contradictions.
An AWS insider did reach out claiming it was an internal test gone wrong, triggered by a misused --dry flag and targeting At a company that size, you'd expect guardrails, audits, approvals low-activity accounts.
According to them, the team ran it without proper approval. Maybe it is true. Maybe they were trying to warn me. Maybe its a trap to get me to throw baseless accusations and discredit myself.
I'm not presenting that theory as fact. I don’t know what happened behind the wall.
What I do know is:
- My account was terminated without following AWS’s own 90-day retention policy
- I had a valid payment method on file
- Support stonewalled every direct question for 20 days
- No answers were provided, even post-mortem