Asking a company about your data often routes through a separate firm hired to run the process, so the request creates a file of its own, and verification can demand a passport to answer an email. The consent banner keeps the proof of what you clicked.
Small data, but it can include an ID copy. Worth a line on the list.
Request correspondence and any ID you sent to verify yourself are kept for the limitation period.
To act on a privacy request, some services first ask you to prove who you are with an ID document.
Industry profile reviewed 23 August 2026. Also machine-readable via the free API.
The file here is thin and unusually pointed: who you are, what you asked to have deleted, and the document you sent to prove it. A leak exposes your identity papers beside the fact that you are someone who asks.
Asking creates a file of its own
Ask a company to show or delete what it holds, and the request is often handled by a separate firm hired to run that process. It now holds your name, your email, what you asked for and what came back. The act of asking is itself a record, kept by a company you did not pick.
The check can cost more than the request
Verification is where these requests stall. A demand for a passport or a driving licence is routine, which means handing over a strong identity document in order to exercise a right. Regulators have said such checks should be proportionate to what is being asked, so the demand is not automatically the last word.
The consent tool keeps the proof
The box asking you to accept cookies exists partly to produce evidence that you did. Consent platforms log which choices you made, on which sites and when, and hold them to be produced if the choice is ever challenged. The record outlives the preference it recorded.
Worked out from the industry, not from any one company. What you actually handed over is yours to record.
Two kinds of hold. LAW SETS IT: a statute makes them keep it. THEY SET IT: a ground the company grants itself.
They can keep records to defend a live or possible legal claim.
Selling your data would defeat the service; correspondence is generally not traded.
Little training use; the data is small and procedural.
Anonymised is their word. A verification copy of your passport identifies you outright, and fifteen ordinary attributes re-identify 99.98% of people without it (Rocher et al., Nature Communications, 2019).
Fifteen demographic attributes re-identify 99.98% of Americans in a released dataset (Rocher, Hendrickx and de Montjoye, Nature Communications, 2019); date of birth, postcode, and sex alone did it for most people in the first study of the problem (Sweeney, 2000).
Language models infer where a person lives, their income, and their sex from their writing alone, at near-human accuracy and at scale (Staab et al., ICLR 2024).
THE STUDIES Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models (Nature Communications 10, 3069, 2019)·Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely (Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3, 2000)·Beyond Memorization: Violating Privacy via Inference with Large Language Models (ICLR 2024, 2024)
Clauses that recur across this industry, and what each one actually permits.
“to provide and improve our services”
The catch-all purpose. Analytics, profiling, personalisation, and increasingly AI training can all ride under it. When they want to do something new with your data, this sentence usually already covers it.
THE MOVE An objection draws the line: use your data to run the service, not to improve, target, or train on it.
“we do not sell your personal information”
Often technically true, and still misleading. It usually means no cash changes hands. Data can still flow to ad networks, analytics firms, and partners: on their definition, sharing is not selling.
THE MOVE Flip the do-not-sell switch where one exists. The written objection on top of it goes on your record.
“service providers, partners, and affiliates”
How data leaves the building with no name attached. Recipients are listed by what they do, never who they are. You cannot send a request to a company you cannot name, which is the point.
THE MOVE An access request can ask for the recipients by name, not just the categories. UK and EU law put that choice with you. The reply, or the silence, goes on your record.
“aggregated or de-identified information”
Stripping the name does not strip the pattern, and the pattern often still points at you. Policies grant themselves free, indefinite use of this data because in their telling it is no longer about you.
THE MOVE If a deletion comes back as 'anonymised', keep the reply. It is their claim, not a fact you can check.
“retained as long as necessary, or as required by law”
They can keep it for: legal duties, tax rules, fraud prevention, possible lawsuits, their own business reasons. None of them carries a firm end date. Deletion becomes a negotiation, not an event.
THE MOVE Which reasons apply to you, and how long each runs, is a request of its own. Their reply goes on your record.
“you grant us a licence to use your content”
A contract term, not a data setting, so a privacy request cannot undo it. The careful version ends with your account. The broad version can be passed on, never expires, and survives deletion.
THE MOVE Whether the licence ends with the account is written in their terms, not yours. Closing the account goes on your record.
“we process this information on behalf of our client”
The firm presents every decision as its client's, which lets it decline to answer for the file and send you back. It still chose what its own portal collects and how long that is kept.
THE MOVE The client and the firm each hold a copy, and the same request works on both. Each reply goes on your record.
“we may require additional information to verify your identity before processing your request”
The request stalls until you hand over more than you started with, and the document you send to prove who you are becomes a new record in the same file.
THE MOVE What became of a document sent for verification is a fair question of its own. Their reply goes on your record.
“we store a record of your consent preferences as proof of consent”
A log of what you clicked, where and when, kept as evidence for a future complaint or audit. It is retained for that purpose rather than for yours.
THE MOVE The log is data about you, and an access request covers the choices held under your identifiers. Their reply goes on your record.
Their own policy is the one that binds them. Pin it down with a request, and keep the reply. Start your record →