Ask for your data, get your account deleted instead

Ask a company for a copy of your personal data, and they might just wipe your account instead.

An Ars Technica reporter tested the California Consumer Privacy Act by filing data access requests with more than 100 companies, explicitly asking them not to delete anything. McDonald’s handed over a 515-page report on app activity, but others faltered. Crunchbase permanently deleted the reporter's account by mistake, while search database BeenVerified scrubbed records instead of providing them. Both companies blamed support agent errors.

Why it matters: California law gives consumers the legal right to see what data companies hold on them. Six years after the rule took effect, corporate support staff still confuse access requests with deletion orders, leaving users with deleted accounts instead of transparency.

Know this: A UC Irvine researcher who filed access requests with over 500 data brokers encountered similar mix-ups, receiving automatic opt-out notices instead of data files. If you file a privacy request, state your intent clearly, but be prepared for support agents to misread it anyway.

Next time you try to inspect your digital footprint, you might accidentally erase it.