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Comment by SergeAx | Hacker News Reader

> When someone installs your app, you need to detect whether they have already installed it previously. If they have, then their activity (including blocks and people who have already declined them) should be linked to this new account

Quite the contrary, every user has a right to be totally forgotten and their data deleted permanently. [Un?]fortunately.

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Exactly. I get where the author is coming from but if you allow tech companies to perpentually save your data and try to cross link it to new accounts, it sets a bad precedent.

Not necessarily. If it is for fraud prevention, then you would be within your rights (at least under GDPR), to retain certain data for a reasonable amount of time.

Good take, thank you.

In my opinion, fraud prevention is, of all reasons to retain data, the least important. This example of dating app behaviour is easily detected with simple heuristics, and leads to far more important information than fraud could ever be.

in this case I really meant that the act of deleting and reinstalling the app is the fraudulent act, although it is not what most people would consider fraud (i.e. financial fraud) it would normally fall under "trust and safety" I guess.

I heard that EU food delivery apps was frauded this way: customer installs app, get hefty first delivery discount, asks to delete their data due to GDPR, rinse. repeat. They figured that out by keeping a hash of their phone number for some time like 3 months and not giving a discount to those numbers.

So I can just tell the police to delete crimes right?

If you living in EU and this is an Apple Police App - you should, IMO.

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