Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

This is always my pessimistic view of the world we live in today. Why in the world would they delete that data vs just putting it on mute/ignore/etc? The only "proof" you have is if you send a request to see the data they hold on you. If they send you an empty report because the ignore flag was set, you would only see an empty report. You have no evidence that the data was actually deleted.

View on HN

And I've never seen a single stalker-corp ("data broker") executive serve prison time for failing to delete data that they claimed was deleted.

Either that has literally never happened, or there's inadequate auditing/enforcement, and I don't consider the former to be plausible.

> Why in the world would they delete that data vs just putting it on mute/ignore/etc?

If you're serious it's because having a fig leaf is useful to reduce risk in controversial business practices, especially if the vast majority of people don't take advantage of it.

I also wonder if it stops them from collecting it. Also, what are the legal requirements if a customer asks their data to be removed?

Still, I'm not giving up a plausible solution because potentially it's only a partial solution.

That's because this is actually a data validation service for brokers. Most of their data is junk or incomplete, but now they know which pieces belong to actual people who want to pay money for it to be deleted.

I get your point but also this is what whistleblower laws are for. A lot of times it’s in the company’s best interest to comply… until 50%+ of the population opts out

Reply on news.ycombinator.com