
You are not what you read: librarians purge user data to protect privacy - jeo1234
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/13/us-library-records-purged-data-privacy
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afshin
The ethics of data retention haven't been fully fleshed out, but it seems
pretty obvious that the industry has to start deleting data at some point
because user that lives forever is guaranteed to one day be compromised or
exploited.

It also seems obvious that voluntarily deleting data is unlikely because data
is an asset. Regulation seems unlikely to be forthcoming because governments
_want_ their own access to corporate data to persist.

What's not obvious is how to approach the issue.

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c_prompt
As an avid reader, a few years ago, I got a membership at
[https://www.librarything.com/](https://www.librarything.com/) because my
queue was getting thin. It has a feature that makes recommendations based on
what you read. I spent many hours entering all the books from my shelves. I
then went to the library (where I get most of my books) to see if they could
print out all books I've read over the years. Nope. "As soon as a book is
returned, the loan is deleted from their database." Why? "So the government
can't find out what people are reading."

The irony that librarians - government employees - actually recognize the real
threat and protect their customers is why the library remains the only
government institution I support.

