[rickmode]

See my reply to bryanrasmussen for a full explanation.

Basically: you reindex ES periodically, so when a user is deleted from the primary, it will disappear from ES upon the next reindex. The old index is deleted at the file system level.

[ipython]

At some point, though, the pedantry can get out of hand. After all, 'deleting' at the file system level is just 'unlinking' the inode from the underlying data blocks... in fact, data forensics at the file system level is probably more well-understood than recovering deleted data from a Lucene shard.

at what point would you be able to 'delete' data without being in violation of GDPR?

[eivarv]

I know - it really is a matter of definition.

Though the EU has said it will consider intention etc. there's really no way of knowing for certain until when and if it's settled in a court case.