[sambucini]

Retain with pain..

The other day I tried to delete my udacity account. No button in settings, I mailed support, they asked my to mail legal (apparently they don't fwd mail..). From legal I received the following response:

Hello,

We are in receipt of your request to delete your account. We are sorry you want to leave the Udacity family; you will be missed.

Before we can proceed with fully processing your request, we need to verify your information. We take these steps to minimize risk to the security of your information and of fraudulent information and removal requests. Specifically, we ask that you provide the following pieces of information:

- Username and email address associated with your Udacity User Account (if different from the one you provided in your initial request);

- Online Courses currently or previously enrolled in;

- Approximate date of User Account registration;

- Country of residence; and

- A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account.

If, after you have provided the above information, we are unable to verify your identity and/or authority to issue the request, we may reach out to you for further verification information.

As a reminder, any deletion actions we take in response to your request are not reversible and may result in Udacity (or you) being unable to retrieve information about your account, enrollment, and records of completion. Please also keep in mind that all removals of such information are subject to requirements to maintain certain data in our archives for legal or legitimate business purposes.

If you have any questions about this request please see our Privacy Policy or let us know.

Thanks for your understanding.

Udacity Legal Team

[saghm]

> A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account

That strikes me as really extreme. If I had an Udacity account and someone tried to delete it, I would be annoyed, but I wouldn't seek to press criminal charges against them.

[fencepost]

Their concern is probably someone deleting somebody else's account, along with all record of courses completed, etc. Is it possible to have an Udacity account if you're not actually paying them? If so, "account removed" and "unpaid account" are very different things and the transition between them is one-way.

[saghm]

> Their concern is probably someone deleting somebody else's account

Yes, that's what I meant. If some stranger deleted my account, I don't think I would be angry enough to attempt to press criminal perjury charges against them.

[fencepost]

It may depend on the real-world relevance of the courses you've taken.

What happens if you're taking part in the Georgia Tech/Udacity online Master's in Computer Science, and suddenly all of your course history on Udacity is gone? Are you then stuck with remotely trying to access records through whatever GA Tech has retained for MOOC students in a degree program? Does it prevent you from signing up for additional courses because there's no record of you completing the prerequisites? Does their platform have a provision for overriding those prerequisites, and what would that have to be based on - word from a professor who taught a MOOC, has never seen you or your work and probably depends on Udacity's listings?

A similar situation could arise if the platform is being used for mandatory continuing education credits in fields that have that. An industry that has CE requirements would often be well-served to partner with an established and stable online learning platform rather than building their own. If you're required to take X hours of CE annually to retain a license but the only proof you have is a PDF certificate from someplace that says "We've never heard of this person," do you qualify or do you end up in licensing/certification hell?

[saulrh]

It depends on what an account deletion means, yeah. Is there a GDPR for universities that makes them delete all history of your attendance at that institute? Do customer privacy laws force Udacity to do a more thorough deletion than you might expect if you're treating it like a website rather than a university or vice-versa?

[stickfigure]

Is that even plausible? Not being government, I can't just declare "Anyone who lies to me is committing perjury, nyah nyah!"

[yholio]

IANL but I think it's perjury to lie in a declaration "under penalty of perjury" only if that declaration is specifically required under the law or if you are submitting it to a legal body, such as a court, or to achieve an expressly defined legal outcome. For example, the DMCA specifically requires such a declaration when making a complaint, so private parties can require it and you could face criminal prosecution for lying.

On the other hand, I have no idea what legal justification could Udacity claim. It's probably bogus.

[emiliobumachar]

Yeah, they might as well require you to write "under penalty of murder" while they're at it.

[jonas21]

If I had a nanodegree and was listing it on my resume or mentioning it in job interviews, I'd be pretty upset if someone came in and deleted all proof that I had completed it.

[saghm]

Yeah, I'd definitely be pretty upset if someone wiped the record of my college degree, but (I hope) Udacity courses don't cost nearly as much as I had to pay.

[iamjaredwalters]

Do employers often depend on "nanodegrees" (first I've heard the term) such as Udacity?

[duxup]

Depend probabbly not, but "hey there is this thing this guy did" might be a real thing. Probably not weighted as much as other things but still relevant to some.

[mynameisvlad]

But if it's a simple "hey there's this thing this guy did", are they going to go to the trouble to actually verify with Udacity that the person took the course? Probably not.

[duxup]

If it is just a link to click, sure why not?

[GordonS]

This is unacceptable - if an authenticated login is good enough to change account details and sign-in info, why isn't it good enough to close an account?

I'm not an Udacity customer, and after reading your account I never will be - I loathe these scummy tactics.

[Dylan16807]

What's 'scummy' about being unable to delete an account?

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Many people (me included) hold the opinion that you should be able to control your data, which includes the right to ask a company storing data about you to delete it unless they have a valid justification not to (e.g. they may have to keep payment history for 10 years for compliance reasons).

In fact, in Europe it's so many people that that's the law.

[Solvitieg]

I hold this opinion too but I struggle with the high cost of accidental and unwanted deletion.

To delete your account's content I think here should be email verification or 2FA.

[Dylan16807]

That doesn't automatically justify "scummy". Especially when it's a tiny amount of data.

And what about a company where you can clear out the few bits of data they have, but still can't delete the account itself?

[cde-v]

Wow, thank you so much for bringing this to light. Our org is literally in the process of signing up for their enterprise product but I can not in good conscience allow it to proceed after seeing that, it is unprofessional on so many levels. I would expect this kind of contractual bullshit from an NY landlord, not from an education platform.

I know they wont miss our 220ish users, but I hope enough individuals see your post to put a dent in their numbers.

[ascar]

Protecting completed educational certificates for their users free of cost seems reasonable. It's not like they force you to keep paying, they are just not easily deleting your educational history on their platform.

[ccmonnett]

It's worth mentioning that people are completing courses, nanodegrees, and even Master's degrees through Georgia Tech on Udacity. These are significant life events for people trying to change/shift their careers, get that next promotion, etc. Having all records of your Master's degree deleted by a 'griefer' is a terrible thing to have to recover from.

I have no affiliation with Udacity but I feel that yours is an extreme response to a company that holds records of work that is very dear to some people and their careers.

[Dylan16807]

> contractual bullshit

You read the post wrong.

[eiurafhlfie]

I'll remember to never sign up for that service. Thank you.

[jrootabega]

Almost sounds like they're about to say GuyWhoWantsToKeepHisAccountSaysWhat

[lowercased]

> As a reminder, any deletion actions we take in response to your request are not reversible and may result in Udacity (or you) being unable to retrieve information about your account, enrollment, and records of completion.

Didn't windows 95 popularize the idea of the trashcan - temporary deletion - 20+ years ago? Don't many db tools support the idea of "soft deletes"?

"Hey - once we do this, you can't get anything back, ever, immediately, it's all gone. For good. But we're going to keep stuff forever that you can never see, and we won't tell you what it is. But you can't have your stuff back, ever. It's gone."

Even my "offline" university had the idea of "not paid", "suspended", "active", etc. Keep me on file, and I'll pay again in 12 months when I take more classes, etc.

[mkbkn]

These days if I want to "delete" an account, I'll just change my email address and password associated with that account. I take help of temporary email providers. Also, I write gibberish in place of my profile data.

[duxup]

Is there an option to simply not pay anymore?

That sounds like a complex process to avoid deleting the wrong things, but maybe not the same for stopping a subscription?

[sambucini]

I wasn't actually paying. The account basically dormant and from back when they started and courses were free. I am just trying to minimize my digital footprint by deleting accounts I don't actually use (I'm happy with value for money at coursera).

[duxup]

Ah, that makes sense.

That delete process sounds like a pain, but I suspect even a "reasonable" delete process is gonna involve a lot of steps and be somewhat a pain considering the consequences of actually deleting data.

[yayadarsh]

Thanks for this. Just opened a support case to delete my account.

[sambucini]

fyi - given it's annoying to collect all that information, I felt udacity might actually be able to help me with that. So I filed a subject access request under GDPR and asked them to provide me with all the data they have in relation to me..