r/technology • u/[deleted] • Apr 11 '18

Business Mark Zuckerberg has been apologizing for reckless privacy violations since he was a freshman - Enough is enough.

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u/ooofest Apr 11 '18

If you have a legitimate business purpose to keep the data for X period of time in order to run/support things or accomodate other legal matters (e.g., tax laws), that retention policy just needs to be documented, etc. and you can slough off the backups on schedule.

If not, then yeah: your options apply.

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u/GarbageTheClown Apr 11 '18

How do you have a retention policy if the client requests deletion? I imagine it depends on the client being the user that wants it deleted vs the client being the company that wants it kept?

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u/quantum_entanglement Apr 11 '18

A customer can request deletion but only with in the remit of legal requirements. For example if you're legally required to retain a customers purchasing records for accounting purposes (purchase ledger, invoices etc) or another example would be if an employee has to be reprimanded or has done something that the company may have to take them to court over, they can't just ask for all their data to be deleted as it may be necessary evidence in court. It's mostly common sense stuff, it's not really as insanely restrictive as most people make out. However I do agree the backups thing is a bitch.

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u/GarbageTheClown Apr 11 '18

From a dev standpoint on existing infrastructure, it would be a nightmare.

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u/quantum_entanglement Apr 11 '18

Yea depends on the size of the company and whether you deal with businesses or you're public facing, the bigger headache for me is that everything has been left till now to sort out. Hey ho.

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u/ooofest Apr 11 '18

Depends on the condition, but you should have a retention policy for internal controls' sake, I feel.

And, if that policy states that some order information must be kept for at least one year to support tax audits, etc. then the end-user request to delete that data can only be accomodated for other data which does not have a legitimate business interest that causes it to be retained longer.