OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Billion people use the internet daily. If any organization suspects some people use the Internet for illicit purposes eventually against their interests, would the court order the ISP to log all activities of all people? Would Google be ordered to save the search of all its customers because some might use it for bad things? And once we start, where will we stop? Crimes could happen in the past or in the future, will the court order the ISP and Google to retain the logs for 10 years, 20 years? Why not 100 years? Who should bear the cost for such outrageous demands?
The consequences of such orders are of enormous impact the puny judge can not even begin to comprehend. Privacy right is an integral part of the freedom of speech, a core human right. If you don’t have private thoughts, private information, anybody can be incriminated against them using these past information. We will cease to exist as individuals and I argue we will cease to exist as human as well.
The power does not extend to any of your hypotheticals, which are not about active cases. Courts do not accept cases on the grounds that some bad thing might happen in the future; the plaintiff must show some concrete harm has already occurred. The only thing different here is how much potential evidence OpenAI has been asked to retain.
Not just that, even without a specific court order parties to existing or reasonably anticipated litigation have a legal obligation that attaches immediately to preserve evidence. Courts tend to issue orders when a party presents reason to believe another party is out of compliance with that automatic obligation, or when there is a dispute over the extent of the obligation. (In this case, both factors seem to be in play.)
Probably because they bothered to pursue such a thing and hundreds of millions people did not.
How do you conclusively know if someone's content generating machine infringe with your rights? By saving all of its input/output for investigation.
It's ridiculous, sure but is it less ridiculous than AI companies claiming that the copyrights shouldn't apply to them because it will be bad for their business?
IMHO those are just growth pain. Back in the day people used to believe that the law don't apply on them because they did it on the internet and they were mostly right because the laws were made for another age. Eventually the laws both for criminal stuff and copyright caught up. Will be the same for AI, now we are in the wild west age of AI.
Since that wasn't ever a real argument, your strawman is indeed ridiculous.
The argument is that requiring people to have a special license to process text with an algorithm is a dramatic expansion of the power of copyright law. Expansions of copyright law will inherently advantage large corporate users over individuals as we see already happening here.
New York Times thinks that they have the right to spy on the entire world to see if anyone might be trying to read articles for free.
That is the problem with copyright. That is why copyright power needs to be dramatically curtailed, not dramatically expanded.
Otherwise, you are picking your data privacy champions as the exact same companies, people and investors that sold us social media, and did something quite untoward with the data they got. Fool me twice, fool me three times… where is the line?
In other words - OAI has to save logs now? Candidly they probably were already, or it’s foolish not to assume that.
But also, no - Just self-host or it's all your fault is never ever a sufficient answer to the problem.
It's exactly the same as when Exxon says "what are you doing to lower your own carbon footprint?" It's shifting the burden unfairly; companies like OpenAI put themselves out there and thus must ALWAYS be held to task.
I completely agree with you, but as a ChatGPT user I have to admit my fault in this too.
I have always been annoyed by what I saw as shameless breaches of copyright of thousands of authors (and other individuals) in the training of these LLMs, and I've been wary of the data security/confidentiality of these tools from the start too - and not for no reason. Yet I find ChatGPT et al so utterly compelling and useful, that I poured my personal data[0] into these tools anyway.
I've always felt conflicted about this, but the utility just about outweighed my privacy and copyright concerns. So as angry as I am about this situation, I also have to accept some of the blame too. I knew this (or other leaks or unsanctioned use of my data) was possible down the line.
But it's a wake up call. I've done nothing with these tools which is even slightly nefarious, but I am today deleting all my historical data (not just from ChatGPT[1] but other hosted AI tools) and will completely reassess my approach of using them - likely with an acceleration of my plans to move to using local models as much as I can.
[0] I do heavily redact my data that goes into hosted LLMs, but there's still more private data in there about me than I'd like.
[1] Which I know is very much a "after the horse has bolted" situation...
100 years from now, nobody will GAF about the New York Times.
First - in the US, privacy is not a constitutional right. It should be, but it's not. You are protected against government searches, but that's about it. You can claim it's a core human right or whatever, but that doesn't make it true, and it's a fairly reductionist argument anyway. It has, fwiw, also historically not been seen as a core right for thousands of years. So i think it's a harder argument to make than you think despite the EU coming around on this. Again, I firmly believe it should be a core right, but asserting that it is doesn't make that true.
Second, if you want the realistic answer - this judge is probably overworked and trying to clear a bunch of simple motions off their docket. I think you probably don't realize how many motions they probably deal with on a daily basis. Imagine trying to get through 145 code reviews a day or something like that. In this case, this isn't the trial, it's discovery. Not even discovery quite yet, if i read the docket right. Preservation orders of this kind are incredibly common in discovery, and it's not exactly high stakes most of the time. Most of the discovery motions are just parties being a pain in the ass to each other deliberately. This normally isn't even a thing that is heard in front of a judge directly, the judge is usually deciding on the filed papers.
So i'm sure the judge looked at it for a few minutes, thought it made sense at the time, and approved it. I doubt they spent hours thinking hard about the consequences.
OpenAI has asked to be heard in person on the motion, i'm sure the judge will grant it, listen to what they have to say, and determine they probably fucked it up, and fix it. That is what most judges do in this situation.
This doesn't seem true. I'd assume you know more about this than I do though so can you explain this in more detail? The concept of privacy is definitely more than thousands of years old. The concept of a "human right", is arguably much newer. Do you have particular evidence that a right to privacy is a harder argument to make that other human rights?
While the language differs, the right to privacy is enshrined more or less explicitly in many constitutions, including 11 USA states. It isn't just a "european" thing.
Nothing has been seen as a core right for thousands of years, as the concept of human rights is only a few hundred years old.
Because the law favors preservation of evidence for an active case above most other interests. It's not a matter of arbitrary preference by the particular court.
It simply didn't. ChatGPT hasn't deleted any user data.
> "OpenAI did not 'destroy' any data, and certainly did not delete any data in response to litigation events," OpenAI argued. "The Order appears to have incorrectly assumed the contrary."
It's a bit of a stretch to think a big tech company like ChatGPT is deleting users' data.
Are these contradictory?
If you overhear a friend gossiping, can't you spread that gossip?
Also, where are human rights located? I'll give you a microscope.(sorry, I'm a moral anti-realist/expressivist and I can't help myself)
There is a longstanding precedent with regards to business document retention, and chat logs have been part of that for years if not decades. The article tries to make this sound like this is something new, but if you look at the e-retention guidelines in various cases over the years this is all pretty standard.
For a business to continue operating, they must preserve business documents and related ESI upon an appropriate legal hold to avoid spoliation. They likely weren't doing this claiming the data was deleted, which is why the judge ruled in favor against OAI.
This isn't uncommon knowledge either, its required. E-discovery and Information Governance are things any business must meet in this area; and those documents are subject to discovery in certain cases, where OAI likely thought they could avoid it maliciously.
The matter here is OAI and its influence rabble are churning this trying to do a runaround on longstanding requirements that any IT professional in the US would have reiterated from their legal department/Information Governance policies.
There's nothing to see here, there's no real story. They were supposed to be doing this and didn't, were caught, and the order just forces them to do what any other business is required to do.
I remember an executive years ago (decades really), asking about document retention, ESI, and e-discovery and how they could do something (which runs along similar lines to what OAI tried as a runaround). I remember the lawyer at the time saying, "You've gotta do this or when it goes to court you will have an indefensible position as a result of spoliation...".
You are mistaken, and appear to be trying to frame this improperly towards a point of no accountability.
I suggest you review the longstanding e-discovery retention requirements that courts require of businesses to operate.
This is not new material, nor any different from what's been required for a long time now. All your hyperbole about privacy is without real basis, they are a company; they must comply with law, and it certainly is not outrageous to hold people who break the law to account, and this can only occur when regulatory requirements are actually fulfilled.
There is no argument here.
References: Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 1, 4, 16, 26, 34, 37
There are many law firms who have written extensively on this and related subjects. I encourage you to look at those too.
(IANAL) Disclosure: Don't take this as legal advice. I've had the opportunity to work with quite a few competent ones, but I don't interpret the law; only they can. If you need someone to provide legal advice seek out competent qualified counsel.
Can't you use the same arguments against, say, Copyright holders? Billionaires? Corporations doing the Texas two-step bankruptcy legal maneuver to prevent liability from allegedly poisoning humanity?
I sure hope so.
Edit: ... (up to a point)
Well maybe some people in power have pressured the court into this decision? The New York Times surely has some power as well via their channels
> That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API), OpenAI said.
This seems very bad for their business.
This raises serious questions about the supposed "anonymization" of chat data used for training their new models, i.e. when users leave the "improve model for all users" toggle enabled in the settings (which is the default even for paying users). So, indeed, very bad for the current business model which appears to rely on present users (voluntarily) "feeding the machine" to improve it.
[0] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NYT-v...
And wrapper-around-ChatGPT startups should double-check their privacy policies, that all the "you have no privacy" language is in place.
Well, it is gonna be all _AI Companies_ very soon so unless everyone switches to local models which don't really have the same degree of profitability as a SaaS, its probably not going to kill a company to have less user privacy because tbh people are used to not having privacy these days on the internet.
It certainly will kill off the few companies/people trusting them with closed source code or security related stuff but you really should not outsource that anywhere.
https://x.com/paulg/status/1913338841068404903
"It's a very exciting time in tech right now. If you're a first-rate programmer, there are a huge number of other places you can go work rather than at the company building the infrastructure of the police state."
---
So, courts order the preservation of AI logs, and government orders the building of a massive database. You do the math. This is such an annoying time to be alive in America, to say the least. PG needs to start blogging again about what's going on now days. We might be entering the digital version of the 60s, if we're lucky. Get local, get private, get secure, fight back.
As far as I understand it, this ruling does not apply to Microsoft, does it?
They can still have legal contracts with other companies, that stipulate that they don't train on any of their data.
The court is after evidence that users use ChatGPT to bypass paywalls. Anonymizing the data in a way that makes it impossible to 1) pinpoint the users and 2) reconstruct the generic user conversation history would preserve privacy and allow OpenAI to comply in good faith with the order.
The fact that they are blaring sirens and hide behind the "we can't, think about users' privacy" feels akin to willingful negligence or that they know they have something to hide.
Storing them on something that has hours to days retrieval window satisfies the court order, is cheaper, and makes me as a customer that little bit more content with it (mass data breach would take months of plundering and easily detectable).
That is probably the solution right there.
If that’s too big a risk it really is time to consider locally hosted LLMs.
Even if I wrote it, I don't care if someone read out loud in public court "user <insert_hash_here> said: <insert nastiest thing you can think of here>"
To protect their users from the this massive overreach, OpenAI should defy this order and eat the fines IMO.
Anyone concerned about their privacy wouldn't use these services to begin with. The fact they are so popular is indicative that most people value the service over their privacy, or simply don't care.
Yes, they want to use everyone's data. But they also want everyone as a customer, and they can't have both at once. Offering people an opt-out is a popular middle-ground because the vast majority of people don't care about it, and those that do care are appeased
Or, the general populace just doesn't understand the actual implications. The HN crowd can be guilty of severely overestimating the average person's tech literacy, and especially their understanding of privacy policies and ToS. Many may think they are OK with it, but I'd argue it's because they don't understand the potential real-world consequences of such privacy violations.
Inevitably such a far-reaching state power will be abused for prurient purposes, for the sexual titillation of the investigators, and to suppress political dissent.
A computer in service of an individual absolutely follows copyright because the creator is in control of the distribution and direction of the content.
Besides, copyright is a civil statute, not criminal. Everything about this comment is the most obtuse form of FUD possible. I’m pro copyright reform, but this is “Uncle off his meds ranting on Facebook” unhinged and shouldn’t be given credence whatsoever.
I don’t understand what means. A computer in service of an individual turns copyright law into mattress tag removal law—practically unenforceable.
Nope. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/crimi...
This is the main reason I can’t use any LLM agents or post any portion of my code into a prompt window at work. We have NDAs and government regulations (like ITAR) we’d be breaking if any code left our servers.
This just proves the point. Until these tools are local, privacy will be an Achilles heal for LLMs.
Yup. Trivial.
because the privacy aspect has nothing to do with LLMs and everything to do with relying on cloud providers. HN users have been vocal about that since long before LLMs existed.
I see one of them: The New York Times.
We need to let people know who the other ones are.
(As in, an actual article, not just a mastodon-tweet from some unknown (maybe known? Not by me) person making the title claim, with no more info.)
By 'know' I mean recognise the name as some sort of authority. I don't 'know' Jon Gruber or Sam Altman or Matt Levine, but I'll recognise them and understand why we're discussing their tweet.
The linked tweet (whatever it's called) didn't say anything more than the title did here, so it was pointless to click through really. In replies someone asked the source and someone else replied with the link I commented above. (I don't 'know' those people either, but I recognise Ars/even if I didn't appreciate the longer form with more info.)
Run LLM in an enclave that generates ephemeral encryption keys. Have users encrypt text directly to those enclave ephemeral keys, so prompts are confidential and only ever visible in an environment not capable of logging.
All plaintext data will always end up in the hands of governments if it exists, so make sure it does not exist.
> What happens when you delete a chat?
> The chat is immediately removed from your chat history view.
> It is scheduled for permanent deletion from OpenAI's systems within 30 days, unless:
> It has already been de-identified and disassociated from your account, or
> OpenAI must retain it for security or legal obligations.
That final clause now voids the entire section. All chats are preserved for "legal obligations".
I regret all the personal conversations I've had with AI now. It's very enticing when you need some help / validation on something challenging, but everyone who warned how much of a privacy risk that is has been proven right.
That's why you read the whole thing? It's not exactly a long read. Do you expect them to update their docs every time they get a subpoena request?
That's one giant cop-out.
All you had to do was delete the user_id column and you can keep the chat indefinitely.
>At a conference in January, Wang raised a hypothetical in line with her thinking on the subsequent order. She asked OpenAI's legal team to consider a ChatGPT user who "found some way to get around the pay wall" and "was getting The New York Times content somehow as the output." If that user "then hears about this case and says, 'Oh, whoa, you know I’m going to ask them to delete all of my searches and not retain any of my searches going forward,'" the judge asked, wouldn't that be "directly the problem" that the order would address?
If the user hears about this case, and now this order, wouldn't they just avoid doing that for the duration of the court order?
The way this judge is pretending like there arent a gazillion ai models that can do this now
One can simply download a app like msty.app combine it with openrouter or ollama based local model and crawl and do all of this from their computer.
This order was absolute insanity and is going to make most corporate users be extremely skeptical with providing their data to american llm providers. This judge single-handedly put 100s of millions of chatgpt users privacy potentially breached and american businesses losing trust as reliable LLM providers not because of their own faults but because of judges like Ms. Wang
This is why America needs a Right to Privacy as a constitutional amendment for american citizens just like how some european and asian countries have.
Presumably, this same ruling will come for all AI systems soon; Gemini, Grok, etc.
I think this is a private Mastodon instance on someone's personal website so it makes sense that it might have been overwhelmed by the traffic.
The privacy agreement is a contract, not a law. A judge is well within their rights to issue such an order, and the privacy agreement doesn't matter at all if OpenAI has to do something to comply with a lawful order from a court of competent jurisdiction.
OpenAI are like the new Facebook when it comes to spin.
Court orders are like temporary, extremely finely scoped laws, as I understand them. A court order can’t compel an entity to break the law, but it can compel an entity to behave as if the court just set a law (for the specified entity, for the specified period of time, or the end of the case, whichever is sooner).
OpenAI has not started to "be incompliant" with GDPR with this order, yes. More like OpenAI was always incompliant because it does not have relevant controls installed that mitigates extraterritorial tendencies of US law.
Regardless of legality of retention this order brings, them not notifying their users (the court did not compel them to hide this from their users (no gag order is in place) about this material change of data processing, could be constituted as breach of various consumer protection laws, misrepresentation, unfair dealing, false advertising and related.
Not your computer, or not your encryption keys, not your data.
Accessing information on a customer's server or tenant (I have been assured) would require a court order for the customer directly.
But... as an 365 E5 user with an Azure account using the 4o through Foundry... I am much more nervous than I ever have been.
How is it with using openrouter?
If I have users that use OpenAI through my API keys am I responsible?
I have so many questions…
Yes. You are OpenAI's customer, and they expect you to follow their ToS. They do provide a moderation API to reject inappropriate prompts, though.
You might be a more benign user of chatGPT. Other people have turned it into a therapist and shared wildly intimate things with it. There is a whole cottage industry of journal apps that also now have "ai integration". At least some of those apps are using openAI on the back end...
The government also says thank you for your ChatGPT logs.
I'm not talking about contractual control (which is largely mooted as pretty much every cloud service has a ToS that's grossly skewed toward their own interests over yours, with clauses like indemnifications, blanket grants to share your data with "partners" without specifying who they are or precisely what details are conveyed, mandatory arbitration, and all kinds of other exceptions to what you'd consider respectful decency), but rather where your data lives and is processed.
If you truly want to maintain confidence it'll remain private, don't send it to the cloud in the first place.
Like why one good other bad?
I imagine a 90s era software industry for today’s tech world: person buys a server computer, person buys an internet connection with stable ip, person buys server software boxes to host content on the internet, person buys security suite to firewall access.
Where is the problem in this model? Aging computers? Duplicating computing hardware for little use? Unsustainable? Not green/efficient?
As frustrating as it is, the answer seems to be everyone and no one. Data in some respects is just an observation. If I walk through a park, and I see someone with red hair, I just collected some data about them. If I see them again, perhaps strike up a conversation, I learn more. In some sense, I own that data because I observed it.
On the other other hand, I think most decent people would agree that respecting each other's right to privacy is important. Should the owner of the red hair ask me to not share personal details about them, I would gladly accept, because I personally recognize them as the owner of the source data. I may possess an artifact or snapshot of that data, but it's their hair.
In a digital world where access controls exist, we have an opportunity to control the flow of our data through the public space. Unfortunately, a lot of work is still needed to make this a reality...if it's even possible. I like the Solid Project for it's attempt to rewrite the internet to put more control in the hands of the true data owners. But, I wonder if my observation metaphor is still possible even in a system like Solid.
*my legal argument is "possession is 9/10ths of the law"
I mean yes. but if you host it, then you'll be taken to court to hand that data over. Which means that you'll have less legal talent at your disposal to defend against it.
It's entirely reasonable, and standard practice for courts to say 'while the legal proceedings is going on don't delete potential evidence relevant to the case'.
More special case whining from tech bro's - who don't seem to understand the basic concepts of fairness or justice.
You can search, browse and continue your chats 100% offline.
It’s free while in beta https://testflight.apple.com/join/RJx6sP6t
. . .
Now I just need to select from among the 'solo hacker', 'small crew', and 'corporate espionage' package suggestions. Price goes up fast, though.
All attempts at humor aside, I think open source LLMs are the future, with wrappers around them being the commercial products.
P.S. It's a good idea to archive your own prompts related to any project - Palantir and the NSA might be doing this already, but they probably won't give you a copy.
There are myriad ways courts balance privacy and legal-interest concerns.
(The Times et al are alleging that OpenAI is aiding copyright violation by letting people get the text of news stories from the AI).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/o...
She asked OpenAI's legal team to consider a ChatGPT user who "found some way to get around the pay wall" and "was getting The New York Times content somehow as the output." If that user "then hears about this case and says, 'Oh, whoa, you know I’m going to ask them to delete all of my searches and not retain any of my searches going forward,'" the judge asked, wouldn't that be "directly the problem" that the order would address?
And here are the links to the court irders and responses if you are curious: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/114530814476876129
And ironically, this now includes the Chinese AI companies too.
Old bureaucratic fogeys will be the death of this nation.
Ofcourse if OpenAI was scanning your chat history for verbatim NYT text and editing and deleting that would be another thing, but that itself would also get noticed.
In short: OpenAI's business practices caused this. They wouldn't have been sued if using legal data. They might still not have an order like this if more open about their training, like Allen Institute.
The question is whether AI itself is aware what the source is. It certainly knows the source.
However, I find it unlikely the OpenAI hasn't already built filters to prevent their output from appearing to be regurgitated NYTimes content.
Now they can’t pretend anymore.
Although keeping deleted chats is evil.
Ona T. Wang (she/her) ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ona-t-wang-she-her-a1548b3/ ) would have a difficult time getting a job at OpenAI but she is given the full force of US law to direct the company in almost anyway she sees fit.
The wording is quite explcit, and forceful:
Accordingly, OpenAI is NOW DIRECTED to preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis until further order of the Court (in essence, the output log data that OpenAI has been destroying), whether such data might be deleted at a user’s request or because of “numerous privacy laws and regulations” that might require OpenAI to do so.
Again, I have no idea how to fix this, but it seems broken.
Speaksy to the rescue for privacy and curiosity (easy-access jailbroken qwen3 8B in free tier, 32B in paid) May quickly hit capacity since it's all locally run for privacy.
There's no reasonable narrative in which OpenAI are not villains, but NYT is notoriously one to shoot a man in Reno just to see him die.
Whereas parties to litigation that receive sensitive data are subject to limits on how it can be used.
At least the Chinese are open about their authoritarian system and constant snooping on users.
Time to switch to Chinese AI. It can't be any worse than using American AI.
Let's say someone creates Russian propaganda with thesemodels or create fraudulent documents.
And yes, I know, I worked on the only Android/iMessage crossover project to exist, and it was clear they had multiple breaches even just in delivery as well as the well known iCloud on means all privacy is void issue.
Does this pertain to Google Gemini, Meta chat, Anthropic, etc. also?
Second, we’re going to need technology that can simply defy government orders, as digital technology expands the ability of one government order violating rights at scale. Otherwise, one judge — whether in the U.S., China, or India — can impose a sweeping decision that undermines the privacy and autonomy of billions.
Anyway the future is open models.
"In the filing, OpenAI alleged that the court rushed the order based only on a hunch raised by The New York Times and other news plaintiffs. And now, without "any just cause," OpenAI argued, the order "continues to prevent OpenAI from respecting its users’ privacy decisions." That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API), OpenAI said."
This is the consequence and continuation of the dystopian reality we have been living for many years. One where a random person, influencer, media outlet, politician attacks someone, a company or an entity to cause harm and even total destruction (losing your job, company boycott, massive loss of income, reputation destruction, etc.). This morning, on CNBC, Palantir's CEO discussed yet another false accusation made against the company by --surprise-- the NY Times, characterizing it as garbage. Prior to that was the entirety of the media jumping on Elon Musk accusing him of being a Nazi for a gesture used by dozens and dozens of politicians and presenters, most recently Corey Booker.
Lies and manipulation. I do think that people are waking up to this and massively rejecting professional mass manipulators. We now need to take the next step and have them suffer real legal consequences for constant lies and, for Picard's sake, also address any influence they might have over the courts.
Why would that not apply to LLM chat services?
The Twitter users quoted by Ars Technica, who cite "boomer copyright concerns" are pretty short sighted. The NYT and other mainstream sources, with all their flaws, provide the historical record that pundits can use to discuss issues.
Glenn Greenwald can only point out inconsistencies of the NYT because the NYT exists. It is often the starting point for discussions.
Some YouTube channels like the Grayzone and Breaking Points send reporters directly to press conferences etc. But that is still not the norm and important information should not be stored in a disorganized YouTube soup.
So papers like the NYT need to survive for democracy to function.
Spicy. European courts and governments will love to see their laws and legal opinions being shrugged away in ironic quotes.
Good job.
The GDPR allows to retain data when require by law as long as needed. People that make regulations may make mistakes sometimes, but they are no that stupid as to not understand the law and what things it may require.
The data was correctly deleted on user demand. But it cannot be deleted where there is a Court order in place. The conclusion of "GDPR is in conflict with the law" looks like rage baiting.
(Even has an OG motorcycle avatar, ha.)
"After court order, OpenAI is now preserving all ChatGPT user logs, including deleted chats, sensitive chats, etc."
The original submission was a link to a post on Mastodon. The post itself was too long to fit in the title, so I trimmed it, and put the full post here in a comment.
But with the URL in the submission being changed, this doesn't really make sense any more! In the future I'll make sure I include in the comment the original link with the original text so it makes sense even if (when?) the submission URL gets changed.
Whenever I "delete" a social media account, or "Trash" anything on a cloud storage provider, I repeat the mantra, "revoking access for myself!" which may be sung to the tune of "Evergreen".
Deletion of data is achieved by permanently discarding the encryption key which is stored and managed elsewhere where secure erasure can be guaranteed.
If implemented honestly, this procedure WORKS and cloud storage is secure. Yes the emphasis is on the "implemented honestly" part but do not generalize cloud storage as inherently insecure.
In the second case, you can choose to trust or distrust the cloud storage provider. Trust being backed by contractual obligations and the right to sue if those obligations are not met. Of course, most EULAs for consumer products are toothless is this respect. On the other hand, that doesn't prevent companies from offering contracts which have some teeth (which they may do for business clients).
I don't know anyone's agenda in terms of commenters, so they'd have to be very blatant for me to use such a word.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
So, why is Safari not forced to save my web browsing history too (even of I delete it)? Why not also the "private" tabs I open?
Just OpenAI, huh?
But moreover, Safari isn't a third party, it's a tool you are using whose data is in your possession. That means that in the US things like fourth amendment rights are much stronger. A blanket order requiring that Safari preserve everyone's browsing history would be an illegal general warrant (in the US).
Like we could be upset when that credit checking company dumped all those social security numbers on the net and had to pay the first 200k claimants a grand total of $21 for their trouble?
By that point it’s far too late.
This makes no sense to me. Shouldn't we address the damage before it's done vs handwringing after the fact?
Did they already go that route and lose — or is this an example of caving early?
> opt out
alright, sympathy lost