I think I had read that Amazon TOS said employees wouldn't have access to your data if you closed your account. I'm sure they have some right to make temporary (we hope) backups but I thought it was a fair clause.
Regardless of company, I don't want them to keep any "backups" of what I delete.
In my view, if I say I want to "delete" my account, I don't want a single trace of my existence on that platform from then on. No emails, no backups, nothing.
By definition, any really effective backup (off site, offline) can't simply be modified instantly when you click a button in a web UI. The reason it takes months for backups to clear out your deleted data is that's how long it takes for the entire backup to be discarded and replaced by a new backup that reflects your deletions.
While the data is likely inaccessible forever in this case, the reason the company can't just say it's been deleted is if they actually do need to restore one of these backups, the data you deleted will come back.
The fact that backups can't be accessed and modified easily for a long period of time is a feature, not a bug, regardless of the actual mechanism of implementation (like tapes). That's what stops e.g. ransomware from affecting backups in addition to the primary storage.
A backup that can be edited to delete data like an encryption key instantly when the user tells it do is also a backup that can be easily lost or corrupted.
The only way in my mind to grant your wish would be if you owned the storage of your credentials. Otherwise you're just moving trust to another entity. I'm not an expert.
Either way that clause showed a hint accountability from Amazon that I haven't seen too often. Not that I've spent much time comparing ToS either.
