California passes landmark data privacy bill

techcrunch.com

9 pointsetr711153 comments

yes finally. A step in the right direction.

Recently I ordered shoes. My account on the company website listed my current address, the billing address was the same. When my shoes were sent they sent them to my old address... from 3 years ago. I logged back in and did not see my old address anywhere on my account however it is obvious they had it in their database and a glitch dispatched my shipment to this old address. What business did they have saving all my addresses? If I deleted it from my account online, why did they save it? I felt very unsettled about all the "deleted" data I had online

Having worked in ecommerce ~8 years ago, one reason I'd say is simply order history. Order table linked to the same address table as the users address book.

If you actually delete the row, the seller would lose the address the order was delivered to. They can need that for any number of reasons including legal compliances such as sales tax compliance.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849.

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