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Comment by Le_Dook | Hacker News Reader

I live in Ireland. A while after GDPR came into effect, I went about deleted a Microsoft account I didn't use anymore. Deleted it on the site, contacted support to request all data be wiped. Done. About 3 years later I get an email that it was accessed and they disabled it for illegal activity. Deleted it in the site, contacted support to request all data be wiped. Honestly think it's more worthwhile to just change the account info to garbage and leave it

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You cannot be quite sure

- that someone who takes over your "garbage" account

- could fake someone else (on your behalf)

- with a traces on corporate servers that will lead authorities to you in the future.

It might be highly unlikely to happen, though.

One way to leave is to garbage the account, then put a max size password on it, generated randomly. Then forget about the whole thing. Maybe that is safe enough?

Until they actually delete the data, there's a way for someone other than you to get to it. It could require a terrible password reset feature or a breach, but the data is still there.

I now actively avoid signing up for services unless I really really need to, just to avoid this mess. These shady deletion practices effectively kill new signups — in my case, at least.

I live in the UK, I tried to delete my PayPal account (that I never wanted to create, it came out of what I thought was a 'guest checkout' flow) and was repeatedly told I needed to provide PII that they didn't currently have in order to 'verify' my identity so they could delete it.

I got locked out of my PayPal, after 5 years of inactivity PayPal finally deleted the account themselves.

Now even youtube wants your PII to "verify your age" for the silliest of videos.

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