I asked them to delete my data, they said "Install our app"
A few days ago I sent a GDPR request to some company to delete my personal data. They said to install their app and send a ticket from the app. The email was sent from the email address to which the account is registered. Is this even legal?
124 replies
No, it’s not at all legal for the company to do this. Reply and remind them they have one calendar month to comply from the date of your original request, otherwise you will make a complaint to which ever information regulator is correct for the juridiction they’re operating in.
I’m a lawyer specialising in Data Privacy, reply here if you need more help on this one.
Also feel free to name the company.
Fuck them and bless u lol
For now, I do not want to announce the name of this company publicly.
If they don't want to solve it amicably, then I will do so.
They already said they don't want to.
They asked you to install the app on purpose, in hopes that you'll decide it's too much hassle and decide not to delete the account.
How do you know this?
My first thought was "they probably want to ensure they are who they say they are and so want an authenticated request" - while that's against GDPR, not everyone is as educated as they should be, and not every mistake is a nefarious activity.
There's no reason an app should be more trustworthy than the email.
It's pretty standard for scummy companies to make the process as annoying as possible.
See cancelling gym membership.
The individual responding isn't the issue. They haven't made any decision to respond like this, they are following a script.
The script is written by people who should know exactly what they are doing, so the result is either malice or negligence. Either way it's unacceptable where the law is concerned.
This is a bad decision, IMO. They may fix it for you, but then you've lost the opportunity to assist everyone who comes after you.
You posted asking the public for help. Please return the favor and report them, as you are legally supposed to do.
Why not? That's so weird...
Think of the poor corporation! If they get punished for their illegal buisness practices, it'll hurt the economy and people will be less inclined to start a small buisness. Didn't you study piss down economics?
"WHAT ABOUT THE TRUE VICTIMS HERE! WHY DOESN'T ANYONE CARE ABOUT THOSE HARDWORKING, SALT-OF-THE-EARTH SHAREHOLDERS! ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING COMMUNISTS?!"
Hahaha
I guess the company is embarrassing in some way.
Must be something that makes you look bad lol
Otherwise you'd just say it. You owe them nothing and they've broken the fuckin law and you're protecting them? What do they have on you?
Or maybe they just want to disclose as little of their personal information, including services relied on, on an open platform like this. Idk if that's the case, but playing devil's advocate here
Personal information like the name of a company they bought something from?
Please
Maybe it's a company with only 3 customers.
Then maybe don't post it at all?
Why should they not? They posted an inquiry, looking for advice. That is their reason for posting.
They do not owe personal information beyond what is required to answer the question. And typically, with regards to anything resembling a legal matter, the less information posted publicly, the better.
I will never understand why people complain online then do this. Why are you being such a pushover. What does amicably even mean to you?
Feetfinders.com? Heh
That reminds me, I might have to put in a formal complaint for a somewhat similar matter.
Bought concert cards years ago, and was never able to unsubsribe from the newsletter. I sent requests to every mail address I could find, and never even got a response. Still got newsletters every now and then though.
They also just make it unnecessarily hard to contact them, so at this point I'm not sure my messages even reached them, which hopefully is what explains their failure to comply.
Depending on country there's probably some regulator office which you can send a complaint to
France in that case, so that would go to the CNIL. Though they want people to make an account to put in complaints online.
Genuine question: Aren't you supposed to say "this is not legal advice?" if you identify yourself as a lawyer but you're not their legal council? Or am I mistaken?
Look it is the internet, you can rest assured if they say they are a lawyer, then there is no doubt ;)
And I'm totally not a dog. Woof!
I TOO AM A CANINE UNIT. I LIKE EXECUTING CANINE BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES SUCH AS RETRIEVING ITEMS FOR MY DESIGNATED HUMAN OWNING UNIT. WOOF.
HAHA WELCOME FELLO CANINE UNIT. PLEASE REMEMBER TO DO UPGRADE X1.90 IMMEDIATELY TO PERFORM BETTER SERVICE TO THE
SWARMHUMAN MASTER YOU SERVE.Is everything okay?
I AM OPERATING WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS.
That one is certainly illegal, misrepresenting yourself as a lawyer online and giving legal advice on that basis. Same for doctors.
Illegal where?
Canada, USA, the EU
And you are certain the poster aboves lives there because...?
"because...?" ?
I can't decide if this is written jokingly or seriously.
The purpose of that disclaimer is for the lawyer to not expose themselves to malpractice lawsuits from OP, which seems VERY unlikely to be relevant here
Nope.
expired
Man, Elon really does ruin everything. Can't even use X as a variable anymore without a disclaimer.
It's causing hell of problems to mathematicians worldwide.
Suddenly, every math formula ever written is subject to copyright and royalties.
They are left asking Y.
Fuck that, I refuse to give him the letter. He can pry it from my cold dead hands as he chokes on my liver!
How about using a programmer style variables like badCompanyName. You don’t have to be a mathematician. Sure, I can totally appreciate concise names, but some times you have to use longer names to avoid collisions.
I prefer [insertconpanynamehere] but in this case name and shame almost seems more appropriate.
Csmel case isn't POSIX complaint. Underscores ftw /s
An X is an X, the social network shall be known as X, formerly Twitter /J
"As you can see on this graph, the Twitter axis represents time, and the Y axis represents total number of unique visitors"
It is an ex-social-platform. It is now a pile of garbage.
It was always a pile of garbage...
Good point. Now it is a steaming pile of hot garbage. Haha
Too true.
There is some arguement to be made that Facebook was kind of good at first. It was useful and it had social impacts that were positive. Over time it became toxic.
Twitter was awful from day one though, mostly because it was bloody useless from day one. Everything that anybody used it for could have been done, and generally was also done, on Facebook, so there was literally no point in the platform.
This is why I always call it twitter. X is a variable
It's new name is "X, formally known as Twitter". Which is what every news website on the planet calls it.
Regardless the fact that X is a stupid name for a company, it's also dumb to rename a popular company generally anyway.
"Twitter" is shorter
No. They are obligated to obey the law as written. They don’t get to create conditions.
GDPR clearly states you can contact any part of the organisation with your request. You can make your request verbally or in writing and they must acknowledge it. They can't refuse and make you use their app.
For fun send them a Subject Access Request and if they don't acknowledge it, report them to the ICO (if you're in the UK)
Name & shame.
Simply ask for the official company name, registration number and country as well as the prereree means of communication that they would like your local data authorities to contact them on.
Also make a 1 star review, stating that you are in talks with your local gdpr authorities about their way of handling privacy.
This worked for me last time a company asked me to download an app to delete my account
prereree -> preferred?
Yes sorry.. my fingers are not made for phones
no
I had this before, though not through a direct communication. Someone had gotten my email credentials somehow and installed a company's app and made an account. When I went through the support pages on the company's site to find out how to delete the account the only listed way was through the app itself.
They were accommodating and helpful when I emailed the company about it though. I just told them that I can't agree to the privacy policy and thus cannot install the app but still need the account to be deleted. They did it.
It is absolutely not
They were very friendly imo. No need to speak legalese or to be rude.
Just tell them that you can't or don't want to install the app.
If they don't help you, then you proceed to remind them that you are not required to install anything for them to comply with GDPR.
Being friendly doesn't negate the fact that they are out of compliance with the law. Even sending a second email to insist they delete your data is an undue burden.
You're right, but sometimes a bit of undue courtesy repays in dividends. Not every minor infraction is nefarious and not every minor infraction deserves reporting. A simple courteous reminder of their obligations may save both parties some undue hassle.
I can imagine this company doing this to ensure only authenticated users can have their data removed. There are other ways...but this was probably what they considered reasonable and painless for all, admittedly they (wrongly) didn't consider the audience of this community in that decision.
Actually, the customer is already getting undue hassle, while the company is just breaking the law. Why can't we just expect better?
Remember that you're talking to some poorly paid person that has to deal with unhappy people all day and probably doesn't even agree with these policies. This is no different than being in a restaurant - don't be rude to service people. Be polite, but firm. You can express that you're unhappy and that this isn't acceptable in a way that doesn't come off as berating some first level service drone.
Nobody broke the law lol.
I believe they have like a month to comply.
The just asked for a ticket in the app, to make their lifes easier. If OP doesn't want to, they still have to comply though.
Now I remember why I hate working directly with customers.
According to my training when I was handling my workplace's GDPR request email companies have 30 days to respond. Meaning they could simply have a bot respond to all incoming emails on day 29 and say "we're reviewing your request" and be in compliance for a while longer
It's the bare minimum of friendliness expected in customer care. Most likely a macro which is normal with these kind of requests.
Time to speak corporate to them. Write out a GDPR removal demand letter. And mail it to them certified or whatever corporate mail does in your local jurisdiction.
I had a simmilar situation with Nicehash (crypto shit company), but I had 2fa enabled and just wanted to unsubscribe from useless newsletters. They asked for a photo of me holding a paper with my personal information. Still didnt solve that, but some comments here might help, following
You can just call them a crypto company, them being shit is kind of implied.
I understand the hate, especially in this community. IMO not all crypto companies are shit, but nicehash is leader in being shit 😉
I like how they end it with "greetings"
Yeah that should definitely be flipped with the GOOD DAY SIR at the end.
I SAID GOOD DAY
eBay does this too. They told me they can't access my data to delete it, that I have to log in with their website or app and send information to just get my data, let alone have it deleted.
Doesn't ebay delete the account after certain amount of inactivity? Just let it lapse then?
Don't think so. I haven't been able to login to my ebay account for 10+ years, still get emails.
Doubtful - I leave my account for years at a time between logins, and it’s still active (have had the account since 2002 or so, and have had at least a 10 year span without any use).
It's way too easy to spoof email "from" addresses.
There should be a way to do it through their website though. Requiring an app is just stupid.
They literally replied to his registered email and he has the reply. That would indicate that he has at least access to the account. So with OP's next email quoting the reply ownership over the associated email address should be reasonably established.
If you can read emails sent to a given address, and send replies from that address, it basically is your email address for all practical purposes no matter who was meant to be using the account. This is not necessarily a good thing and better end-to-end security would be nice but it is what it is. Odds are the app itself would let anyone change the password and log in provided they can read the emails, unless it's using some form of 2FA.
Their site is just a landing page, there's no login option or anything like that. Their business is a smartphone application.
Edit: Gmail uses SPF, DMARC and DKIM signing so spoofing is not possible if their email services are configured properly.
SPF/DKIM/DMARC does not prevent sending the spoofed message, though. It is up to the recipient system to filter out the message should the checks fail. Even then, the message often lands into spam instead of being dropped.
Anyway they should configure their systems to reject unsigned e-mails and providers that don't have a proper SPF configuration. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) allows you to make sure that the message was sent by an approved server and was not forged by some hackur.
You'd be surprised how many legitimate email are sent with failed SPF. Even Microsoft sometimes doesn't update their MX records and the SPF fails.
That is especially true with large organizations where multiple non-technical teams are ordering/configuring products that send email.
Unfortunately it is difficult to solve, unless services stop allowing sending without verifying and forcing proper configuration. That would drive sales to competitors who do not enforce this, though.
But there are other services than GMail around. Companies want one process that handles all requests equally, so there will be no exceptions for "check if the provider uses DMARC and DKIM".
Then you, kindly dispose urself of all my personal data.
—Dictated but not read, fuck you Me(also take me to ur leader)
OP send them one more request explaining that under GDPR you are not required to do anything more than request your data be deleted and they must comply. Explain to them that if they don't do so in a timely manner you will be contacting your country's data protection office and filing a complaint.
I don't know, maybe? If they have a process, no matter how laborious and roundabout, they can always claim that they have a process and that you have nothing to complain about, legally speaking. Their wagering that people will not go through all the bullshit, and they're unfortunately right. That's literally why they do it. The only correct response is to hound them relentlessly, going to Twitter (or something else idk these days, and I'm not calling it X), the press if necessary, and pestering as many government bodies and officials as you have to in order to make them get their fucking shit together. And then they'll make your particular situation of priority because now you're being more of a pain in the ass than actually doing their job is. They won't change the broken system, because one exception in a thousand isn't worth it to them to be bothered with.
Tldr, maybe but it probably won't help you, so make it as big of a headache for them as possible.
They don't get to make it harder to cancel than to sign up
In the EU you don't need to follow their process. Any GDPR request can be made to them through any channel and they must comply. If they don't, then the next step is to file a complaint with your local data protection office, or the data protection office of the European country where the offending company is represented.
Actually, this is probably not only legal, but following the GDPR. Yes, the mail was sent from the address you have registered with them. Yet, that does not necessarily identify you as the sender. Your mail could be a shared account, it could be hacked, whatever.
So, in order to verify you, they'd have to ask you for more personal data via email, which would be problematic GDPR-wise.
Now, in order to not ask you for any data they don't really need to have, they decided to let their login system handle the authentication.
If someone hacked into my account, they could simply click "I lost my password" and reset it.
Use this template in chat gpt...
Can you write an official letter for removal of my private data for (company name) and (my name). Use a strong tone and legalese langage. Make sure you verify the timeframe they must respond (act with 30 days of this letter) and any other specific to make sure they know what my rights are and that I am serious. List the typical types of data they might have on me. And write in a 1800L lexile scale.
Catch 22: give ChatGPT your data, then try to delete your ChatGPT account using ChatGPT
You can ask the text without name and write it after... I mean really? Search on hugging face for free LLM (that's the kind of ai of chat gpt) and try it for free without registration there is that's suuuch a thing
Oh I was just joking :)
How are you going to speak to it without revealing any information though? It now knows you need legal advice.
Don't do this.
Why?
chatgpt is not a lawer
It doesn't matter since none is needed for this. I understand that the goal is to add filler with intimidating legalese, but I doubt that customer "support" is going to react as they expect.
It would be complete bullshit, but clearly the people on the other end would be too stupid to recognize it as such. So there's really no reason not to do it as long as you're aware that it's an empty threat.
I think you could achieve the same without bullshitting by simply saying "Please delete my data within 30 days or I will report you to the relevant authorities", but each to their own.
I'm sorry but you live in another universe from not finding this the perfect letter.
From chat gpt
[Your Name] [Your Address] [City, State, Zip] [Email Address] [Phone Number] [Date]
[Recipient Name] [Company Name] [Company Address] [City, State, Zip]
Subject: Formal Request for Immediate Erasure of Personal Data
Dear [Recipient Name],
I am writing to formally request the immediate erasure of all personal data pertaining to myself, [Your Name], from your systems in accordance with Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This entails the deletion of my data from your databases and any other processing systems within your organization.
The categories of data I am referring to include, but are not limited to:
You are hereby instructed to ensure this erasure without undue delay and, in any event, within thirty (30) days of receipt of this letter. Failure to comply within this timeframe will compel me to take further legal action to enforce my rights under the GDPR.
I further request that you provide written confirmation upon successful deletion of my data, indicating that no personal data pertaining to me remains in your possession, custody or control.
In the event that you require any additional information to comply with this request, you may contact me via email or phone, as provided above.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this serious matter.
Sincerely,
[Your Signature (if sending a hard copy)] [Your Name (printed)]
Gmail. How ironic
That's really not cool that you're upfront about your assumptions. I'm moving from Gmail to another mail provider and, in the process, deleting accounts I don't use. Please don't assume in advance something you have no idea about.
I was in the same situation as you a year ago. Deleted my Google and Microsoft accounts. Would you mind sharing what new services you have settled with?
For some critical services (such as banks, hosting providers, etc.) I use ProtonMail. For the rest of the stuff, I have my own email server hosted at my home set up with a VPN tunnel to OVH (data is kept on a server at my home, but the server is publicly available from the Internet thanks to a cheap VPS from OVH). The most private is what you have full control over.
With this solution, I have full control over my data.
Wow that's pretty advanced. I always thought about hostim my own email server but then people reminded me that I might get blocked or classiefied as spam so it didn't seem worth the effort. I don't use email that often anyways.
Just because you content to a data stark foes not mean you consent to all data sharks.
Cool clickbait. By censoring the company you are complaining about you are removing any possibility of confirming the story. Why would you do this? you are supposedly mad about the company and thus airing a public grievance, yet what could is a public grievance if no one know the target of your ire? Well it's useless, so why would you post this? For internet points? Maybe go back to reddit.
The purpose of this post was to find out if what they do is legal. That is, if I have the right to file a complaint. I'm not obliged to tell you the name of the company. I have things to do and I don't care about "internet points", as you call them.
You say you don't "Care about internet points" and you have "things to do" yet you constantly post and comment on AI generated memes. It's ok if you want to enjoy things online. It's also ok if you do deeply care about internet points, but don't outrage farm.
Bro shut up PLEASE