DATA ACCOUNTABILITY LEDGER
THEY KEEP RECORDS ABOUT YOU.
Now you keep records about them.
Every company you've used still has a file on you.
Your data is already out there, and most of it went out for good reasons. Managing that, realistically, is a different job from pretending you can pull it back. You applied for a job, and a screening company you never met checked your past. You rented a flat, and a referencing agency wrote a report on you for the landlord. You proved your age. You opened an account you needed for one week in 2021, and the account is gone but the file isn't. None of it was careless; it's what a normal life asks of you now. And the file keeps working after the moment passes: it can train AI models, or travel on to companies you never hear about. From your side it's invisible: some companies give you a settings page, most give you nothing at all, and none of it puts a word on the record. A dated, written request does.
If your data surfaces in a breach years from now, you'll need to show what you asked for, when, and how they replied. That's what DÆTRAX is for.
MOVES THAT MATTER
See. Limit. Delete. Everything else is follow-up.
DATED REQUEST
That is what puts a company's file on the record.
CLAIMS TAKEN ON FAITH
What they reply is logged as a claim, not a fact.
Four steps to a permanent record of your data rights.
TRACK
Know who holds your data
Add companies by name or domain, pick their trade, and the likely data footprint fills itself in: contact info, financial, health, biometrics.
REQUEST
Make the move that fits
See what they hold, limit how it's used, or delete it. Every request is plain English, asks rather than cites, and is worded for how retention actually works.
MONITOR
Log every claim
Whatever a company says is a claim: log that it was made. The reply itself stays in your inbox, where the proof belongs. Deadline reminders keep the file moving.
PROVE
Keep your record
A permanent record of who holds what, what you asked, when, and whether they answered, sitting beside the replies in your own inbox.
Once your data is out of your hands, a company is one of two things: an open question you carry, or a dated answer you hold. The four steps move each company from the first to the second. The data doesn't come back; the question closes. What they hold, what they stopped, and when they said it, on your record.
One quiet side effect: every company added joins an anonymous count of which companies people feel the need to keep records about. Records about companies, kept by the people they're about, have never added up to anything before. Now they do.
Privacy law has two hands.
One hand gave you rights: see what they have, ask for deletion, object to processing. The other hand gave the company reasons to keep your data anyway. Both come from the same legal system. Both are enforced.
The carve-outs override anyone's requests, a deletion service's as much as yours. That is why the delete button you were promised does not exist, and why we won't sell you one. What the law reliably gives you is narrower and better: the company has to answer you in writing, against a deadline, and the answer is yours to keep.
Only you know where your data went and what you handed over. Nobody else can keep this record.
RIGHT HAND
What you can ask for.
- See what they hold
- Ask for deletion
- Object to processing
- Ask how long they keep it
LEFT HAND
Why they can keep it.
- "Legitimate interest", the catch-all
- "As long as necessary", undefined
- Anti-fraud & criminal-investigation
- Tax, KYC, accounting
- Safety, abuse, moderation logs
- Legal hold & suppression lists
The right to see what they hold, limit what they do with it, and delete what can go exists in most modern data-protection laws. Different frameworks, one shared mechanism: the company owes you an answer, on a deadline.
34 FRAMEWORKS, ROUGHLY HALF THE GLOBAL POPULATION COVERED
MEET DECKARD
The privacy policy reader you were never supposed to have.
Privacy policies were never written for you. They're long, dense, and glazed with legal language so you skim and click accept. That's the point.
Deckard reads them at scale, and across industries the same patterns repeat: retention is the norm, sharing and AI training sit inside broad terms, and deletion comes with carve-outs, some grounded in law, others stretching as far as the company wants. All of it is self-attested. Retention is a black box: best case, they keep it longer than they'd like to admit; worst case, they just keep it.
DÆTRAX doesn't stand between you and them or dress that reality up. Deckard tells you what to expect from an industry before you ask; you send the request, the reply lands in your own inbox, and the ledger keeps the account.
READ THE RESEARCH · HOW EACH INDUSTRY HANDLES YOUR DATA →They never stop collecting. You should never stop recording.
Your data footprint grows daily
With every account you create, every form you fill, every service you sign up to, your personal data spreads further. DÆTRAX tracks who holds what, so when you need to act you’re not starting from scratch.
Retention has carve-outs
Companies retain under fraud, legal, tax, and suppression carve-outs, sometimes for years. Others claim "anonymisation" that strips your name but not the patterns. Knowing what lawfully stays is the difference between a request that works and one that asks for the impossible.
Your timeline vs their claims
You asked for deletion on March 3rd. Their reply on March 18th said it was done. Six months later, your data appears in a breach. You still hold their reply, dated, in their own words. That’s not a complaint. It’s a case.
Preparation, not just reaction
Most people only think about their data after a breach or scandal. By then, they have no records, no dates, no proof they ever asked. DÆTRAX is an ongoing record, built before you need it, so you’re never left empty-handed.
A request also tells the company one true thing about you: you keep records. You can't watch their database, and nobody can. But from the day they answer, their own words are on file, and everything they do next can be measured against them.
Contacting a company about your data can feel like making yourself visible to an organisation you'd rather leave behind. That hesitation is real, and it's what makes most people do nothing.
You don't have to start by asking. Adding a company to your ledger contacts nobody and sends nothing: a private, dated entry on your side, and one more mark in the anonymous count of which companies people feel the need to keep records about. The companies people add and then hesitate to approach are the most telling part of that count; it's the part we read most closely. When you're ready to ask, every request is structured and documented so you don't figure it out alone. You're not making an accusation. You're keeping a record.
What you'll actually see.
You send the request from your own inbox. The ledger holds the proof: who you asked, what you asked for, when their deadline runs out, and what they claimed. Every row outlasts the email.
4
2 SENSITIVE CATEGORIES
3
1 PAST DEADLINE
2
1 RESPONDED · 1 NO RESPONSE
2
NEXT: 18 JUL
Mock: generic company names, no real organisations. Your ledger fills with the companies you actually track.
Latest from the Dispatch.
ALL 29 ISSUES →ISSUE 29 · THE STATUS QUO
It asked you everything. It answers nothing.
We read the privacy policies of the most popular video-interview and assessment platforms, then the sales pages of the same companies. Half the policies never mention AI. The sales pages sell it by name. In between sits everything a candidate is owed and not told: how long the recording stays, where the score goes, and what happens when the software gets it wrong.
READ THE ISSUE →
Common questions.
MOST PEOPLE NEVER KEEP TRACK
Losing track of your data shouldn't be the cost of having a modern life.
DÆTRAX is here to make sure you don't.