You are not what you read: librarians purge user data to protect privacy

The ethics of data retention haven't been fully fleshed out, but it seems pretty obvious that the industry has to start deleting data at some point because user that lives forever is guaranteed to one day be compromised or exploited.

It also seems obvious that voluntarily deleting data is unlikely because data is an asset. Regulation seems unlikely to be forthcoming because governments want their own access to corporate data to persist.

What's not obvious is how to approach the issue.

As an avid reader, a few years ago, I got a membership at https://www.librarything.com/ because my queue was getting thin. It has a feature that makes recommendations based on what you read. I spent many hours entering all the books from my shelves. I then went to the library (where I get most of my books) to see if they could print out all books I've read over the years. Nope. "As soon as a book is returned, the loan is deleted from their database." Why? "So the government can't find out what people are reading."

The irony that librarians - government employees - actually recognize the real threat and protect their customers is why the library remains the only government institution I support.