This “one neat trick” means that some high level employee probably had to do it by hand.
Making a request like this is a borderline unethical waste of someone’s time.
Making a request like this is a borderline unethical waste of someone’s time.
The mindset change that needs to happen in our industry is that companies should build this into their products by default. "Download my data" should be a feature that is simply planned and built. Just like "permanently delete my data" is not optional either. It's not even that hard to build mostly. It's only hard if it catches you by surprise, which these days is poor planning more than anything else.
In Europe, and Germany especially, you can just expect people to do GDPR requests just because they can. We've had that happen right after GDPR became a thing. And you are legally required to be ready for that and respond in a timely fashion. If you want to do that manually, that's your problem. Small startups get a way with that. At some point it becomes annoying and you just fix it properly. Up to you when you do that.
These regulations just further enable monopolies and make it more difficult for diverse entrepreneurs to get into the game.
I’m just saying to be mindful that you might be costing a small business an enormous amount by making these types of requests.