| I agree with you that an important and useful part of the GDPR is deletion of your data. Good examples: No advertising and spam. Prevention of later hacking and theft of your data like e.g. credit card numbers or private messages. You have revealed your true identity on social media and want to remove your posts. But maybe GDPR gives a false sense of safety and security and control: - What is technically possible ? When I cite you, must my posts be deleted as well ? - Who controls what companies do outside of the EU or even within the EU ? - National police and secret services in the USA and EU might be more interested in the data than some US company. They have no moral problem with installing spyware on your computer. - Banks and maybe even insurance companies have already the right to know much about you. - https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo... - https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo... IMO, you can only trust that the EU and the rest of the world does not give you control when it really matters. Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGeevtdp1WQ&t=1 |
> When I cite you, must my posts be deleted as well ?
You mean for comments and such? What I write on a site's comment section falls under copyright law, with the usual attribution reservations etc. So no.
> Banks and maybe even insurance companies have already the right to know much about you.
I shouldn't have used the word "privacy" in my comment. I think calling GDPR a privacy law is a shortcut a lot of people take (myself included), but it really is a data protection law. (It's even in the name!)
GDPR doesn't talk about privacy very much. In fact, I just searched the full english text of the law: There isn't a single instance of the word "privacy".
In other words, it doesn't so much say who can and cannot store and analyze your data. Instead, it lays out your responsibilities if you are storing/analyzing personal data, and your (consumer) rights as someone whose data is stored/analyzed somewhere.