this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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Privacy
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This is a shit show. But from what I've been able to see, when you remove yourself from the companies, as time goes by, there's not much of the data you leave behind that can be easily visible to others, other than whatever company has your data, or who they choose to sell it to.
I haven't been in any social network for over 8 years now, except X, that I killed my account, coincidentally, the day before the acquisition was announced. Last night I did a Google search for my name in my country, and another one global, and the only place I found info about me, after digging down 30+ pages, was linked-in, which my wife manages for our business. Granted, they all probably hold all the data they got from me when I was stupider, but I'm sure they understand how useless data becomes over time if it's not updated.
I guess my advantage is that I used Gmail accounts for absolutely everything back then, and since I killed all of them, I never get emails from anyone I'm not directly associated with.
When you ask them to delete your account they should delete your account. There is no excuse for them to have your contact information if you dont have an account with them
Often what happens is that when you sign up they also make an API call to their email list service. Then when you delete your account they remove you from their DB but often forget to remove you from the other services. This obviously isn't acceptable but often not intentional.
In Europe you have to opt in to newsletters. Companies are not even allowed to have the opt in field pre checked!
You activelly need to tick the opt in check box.
Except the email in question is not a newsletter. Companies often use separate mail list services for important product announcements and similar things as well. Obviously there should be a process in place that removes you from these external services too when you delete your account, but I assume this is what broke down in this case
This is also true in lots of places like Canada and (IIUC) California. But very frequently it doesn't happen. In Canada you can report it but then nothing happens.
I have a hard time believing they actually delete anything.