I filed a GDPR deletion request with Twitter a couple of weeks ago. It was quite a challenge to find a way to contact Twitter (for anyone who wants to you can do so via: https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/en/default_reporter.asp) - but I finally succeded. I did not simply wanted to deactivate my account I want all of my data to be deleted as is my right through the GDPR.
A couple of weeks later I received message saying that my account had been deactivated and that I should not log in as this my halt the deletion. Today (one and half months later) I tried logging into Twitter and found out that my login email is still registered).
I filed a new complained but wanted to know if anybody here has had their data successfully deleted? Twitter makes it deliberately hard to do so and this might be a violation of the GDPR.
There was a story how one guy recorded himself deleting each and every comment he made. The video was like 2-3 hours long. Manually one by one. Only to find that they restored his comments the next day.
How reddit hasn’t been sued by the California attorney general I’ll never know.
This is about Twitter though
For reddit you can use Redact, it can edit the comments for you, they don’t seem to revert those changes.
That was an accident with restored backups though.
violation of the GDPR.
So all of your tweets (while being still associated with your email adress or handle), your friendlist, and such are still there? If so, that will be costly for Musk :D
Well - the information is not available publicly. But as the system still recognizes my email I can proof that at least that information as not been yet deleted. And I suspect that all of my data remains on Twitter’s servers as of now.
Contact your local government’s DPA and file a complaint. This is probably a violation of the GDPR and they deserve to be investigated for it.
However, I have never heard of Ethicspoint. What I did find on this page was:
If you live in the European Union, EFTA States, or the United Kingdom, the data controller is Twitter International Unlimited Company, with an address of:
Twitter International Unlimited Company Attn: Data Protection Officer One Cumberland Place, Fenian Street Dublin 2, D02 AX07 IRELAND
You can write your (legal) mail to this address.
It seems like the place to contact Twitter’s Privacy Officer online is here: https://twitter.ethicspointvp.com/custom/twitter/forms/data/form_data.asp
I honestly doubt they’re going to do much with these requests anyway. As they state in their privacy policy:
If you wish to raise a concern about our data processing practices, you have the right to do so with your local supervisory authority or Twitter International Unlimited Company’s lead supervisory authority, the Irish Data Protection Commission, using the contact details listed on their website.
Or, as I interpret it: “go ahead, complain, you know nothing will happen”
Thanks. I think that is the same form I used the first time and basically the same as the link I gave.
It is clear that they are trying hard to make it complicated - that’s why I would urge anyone who wants their data deleted to try to contact them, to complain and complain again. In the end paying their support personnel will cost these companies enough money that they might consider a different practice. (As long as it is not simply a bot answering your requests - looking at you, “Bob” from Facebook support.)
If Twitter won’t comply in the next 30 days I will contact my national authority.
Does anybody also know whom to contact on an EU level?
PS: what’s GPA?
GPA is what my autocorrect turns DPA into if I don’t watch it carefully. I’ve edited my comment to fix it.
DPA stands for Data Protection Authority, it’s the government institution that’s tasked with maintaining GDPR compliance. Every EU country and the UK has one, and they’re the first place you should take your privacy complaints when the companies themselves don’t solve your problem for you.
Hi, Never tried to delete my account there, but if you have a track of your discussion with them, I’m sure your DPA will be happy to hear your complain :)
Report it to your government. I know there are many regulators and politicians in both Europe and many US states who would love to have as much ammunition as they can get to go after Elon.
Why is their contact point another URL lol
You know it won’t matter, Musk isn’t complying with shit. The flippant way he moved the servers shows he has zero interest in anything but himself.
Godspeed.
“Deleted” my Facebook account 3 times in last couple years. I can still log in
I tried this as well, created a ticket and since then it’s as if no ticket exists… if you manage something, please let me know. Or if you know where I can report them, I was not able to find anything (my google-fu is pretty weak)
Or you could just let it sit there, set it to private, maybe unfollow everyone, then access it once a month just to keep it live, and be an inactive lurker. He hates those.
