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Comment by oh_sigh

7 years ago

Google deletes your data within I think 64 days if you request them to or delete your account.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32046

There's nothing there which clarifies that "delete" isn't a euphemism for "flag it to no longer be displayed to users" like it is everywhere else where companies collect data on users, so you'll excuse my skepticism.

  • Exactly and they have the perfect excuse:

    "Well when talking about deleting we mean we do the exact same thing the file system does to a file, it flags it, but doesn't actually erase it's content. Acting like a filesystem delete operation is what people expect when using that word"

    • That would be somewhat reasonable if it were just an implementation detail. But unfortunately, it's not just an implementation detail. When a filesystem has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, it overwrites the data which was flagged for deletion. But when a web 2.0 company has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, they buy more hard drive space, usually automatically.

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