I'd be pissed...

Sometimes you need to file lawsuits to motivate companies to comply with your wishes. Though without someone on the inside or a subpoena demanding proof of your information being deleted, their is no real way to find out for sure if your data has been deleted or not.

format much?

Great photo!

Most companies do keep account information on you, even if you cancel service. When I worked at Sprint, I saw accounts that had been closed in 1998 still in the system, with the name, address, contact number and SSN still intact (now obviously most of the information would have changed by now, except for name and SSN, but it was still in there). We never actually physically removed an account from the system completely. They were just dormant.

As a former database developer, there is some credence to their reasoning. When you design a database, certain fields are linked to other fields for consistency sakes. The interlinked data forms a mesh of sorts and it becomes impossible to delete a certain record without causing a domino effect. Therefore, the database developer will make it technically impossible to permanently delete anything.

Now, there are ways to properly account for deletes from the start. And you could also redesign the schema, but it's not a non-trivial endeavor. What's likely an easier solution is for the company to keep the records in their system, but overwrite the OP's personal data with stuff like "John Doe", "123 Main St.", etc.

I had this happen with another job site a couple years ago. I had to file a BBB complaint that contained language about going to the state AG to get it resolved.

Can I get a bigger copy of the story image? :*

@ShortBus:

Changing the info to generic John Doe entries would solve the problem assuming they did the intelligent thing when they designed the database and used a unique serial number as the primary key. If they are idiots and used ssn's or some other form of personal information, everyone is screwed and the database architect should be shot and/or forced to endure an endless loop of pain.

Yes, databases are usually designed so that information is never really deleted. Some are set up so that even if all of your account information is removed from all of the relevant tables, there are still "histories" of any and all changes that are made to the database that will save ghost copies of the data. These are saved in case any changes need to be rolled back for whatever reason, and it's safer, from the DBAs perspective, to keep all this information to preserve this functionality. All of the DBs I've worked on had systems like this, but I don't know if this is common practice.

The best you can do is ask them to delete your account information from the front-end, then close the account. Your data will never go away, but it should be inaccessible to anyone but the DBAs.

Still, there should be laws against storing customer information after they've requested it deleted, especially when so many disgruntled employees are making a buck selling the stuff.

couldn't you just log in to the account and change the personal information to something false?

@xirian: [www.gettyimages.com]

Have you thought about telling them that you've changed your contact information? I wonder if that would work. You can tell them you changed your address and number and see if they can "update" your profile. Maybe that will get your private data out of their system.

How can they keep it when they never had your consent to have it in the first place? I don't want to hear any technical excuses. They can fill it with random garbage and their database will still work.

@ThunderRoad: ..and we all know how helpful and useful the BBB is:

[consumerist.com]

For reasons unknown, someone else set up a profile with his personal info on Jobs.com.

I think the wording here is confusing. I'm thinking that the situation here is that Dan himself did register on Jobs.com, but then found himself registered on some unrelated website, and he was able to determine that the information used to register him on this unrelated site came from the Jobs.com site.

It's not clear here if it's the case that Dan suspects Jobs.com of sharing his info without permission or that their database was hacked, or if the information that was "leaked" was just info that was publicly available at a time when his resume was posted.

But yeah, I would just trying "updating" my info with nonsense info. By doing so, I would feel more assured that the actual data was no longer available than receiving an unverifiable assurance that "Oh yeah, we totally deleted your data."

Why not log in and change all the information himself? John Doe at 123 Main St, etc

That's why you should actually read the privacy policy before you attempt to imput any personal information into any website.

If you can live with the policy, go for it, If not, move along.

@ShortBus: Yes, but it should be possible to identify all information linked to a record in the db and delete all related records with a few queries. If not, it's just bad design.

@ShortBus: As a customer care specialist, I can tell you that nobody gives a crap what the database schema looks like. What does matter is the privacy of my personal information. Their IT folks need to do whatever it takes to "make it work" just like the rest of us do, no excuses.