The 'Processing Error' Lie: Why Companies Delete Your Data to Avoid Showing It to You
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Opinion: When firms 'accidentally' delete data in response to access requests, they aren't confused—they're scrubbing the crime scene.
Let's be clear: I don't buy the 'processing error' excuse.
As Ars Technica first reported, a pattern of corporate behavior is emerging that should alarm anyone who cares about their digital footprint. Reece Rodgers attempted to exercise his rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—specifically the right to request a copy of personal data—by filing requests with 100 different companies. What he found wasn't just incompetence; it was a systemic failure of good faith.
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**OPINION: The Weaponization of Friction**
When a company tells you they 'accidentally' deleted your account after you asked for a data report, they aren't making a clerical mistake. They are performing a tactical erasure.
Consider Crunchbase. Rodgers sent a clear request on August 17, explicitly stating: “I am not requesting deletion at this time.” Two days later, a support representative informed him that his account had been permanently deleted. A Crunchbase spokesperson later dismissed this as a “processing error” caused by a “person on our customer success team.”
Then there is BeenVerified. Rodgers emailed their CCPA compliance address on August 19, specifying he wanted access, not deletion. The company first claimed his report was already removed from search results, then pivoted to claiming they could not verify his identity, and finally insisted they processed an 'opt-out request.'
This isn't confusion. It is a gauntlet designed to make the request so exhausting that the consumer simply stops asking.
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**The Scale of the Scrub**
This isn't limited to two companies. UC Irvine PhD student and *Consumer Beware! Exploring Data Brokers’ CCPA Compliance* coauthor Elina van Kempen has observed this on a massive scale. Having helped place access requests with over 500 data brokers, van Kempen noted that automatic answers frequently misclassified access requests as requests to opt-out or delete data.
The motive becomes obvious when you look at the contrast. McDonald's provided Rodgers with a 515-page report detailing app interactions in granular detail. That is what actual compliance looks like.
Ben Winters, director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, noted that these failures highlight the fragility of policy frameworks that depend on corporate good faith. It is a choice. Companies know the difference between an access request and a deletion request; they just hope you'll go away.