Erasure, and what survives it

Field 01Erasure reaches data whose purpose has ended

The right to erasure — sometimes called the right to be forgotten — applies where the purpose for which data was collected has ended, where consent was the basis and you have withdrawn it, where the processing was unlawful, or where the law requires erasure. What this means in practice is that the reachable data is the data with a finished purpose: a marketing profile after you withdraw consent, a completed support conversation, a personalisation flag you object to. Start the request from the purpose, not from “delete everything”: naming the data whose purpose has ended is what makes the request one the operator has to answer on the merits.

• Name the data “My marketing profile”, “my personalisation segments”, “my session logs” — be specific.
• Name the purpose State that the purpose has ended, or that consent was withdrawn.
• Separate the categories A single request can grant part and refuse part; make each part distinct.
• Ask for the ground For any refusal, ask which legal duty requires the retention.

Field 02The legal floors erasure cannot pass

Where an operator must keep a record to meet a duty, erasure does not remove it. The common floors are the identity and verification record, the transaction and payment record, and the source-of-funds evidence, all tied to anti-money-laundering and licensing rules, plus dispute records held for a possible complaint. A self-exclusion marker is in the same family: it is kept so that it keeps working. These are lawful retentions, and the operator should name the ground. A refusal that names a specific duty is a different animal from a refusal that names nothing, and only the second is worth escalating.

Field 03What survives a successful erasure request, and why

Even a granted request rarely removes everything, and the residue is predictable. Some data is anonymised rather than deleted, so it stays in aggregate form with no link to you. Some is retained in a minimal form to prove the request itself was honoured or to keep a do-not-contact flag. A self-exclusion marker survives, deliberately. And any record on a legal floor survives until its period ends, at which point it should be deleted or anonymised on the operator’s schedule rather than on a second request. None of this is a loophole; it is the ordinary shape of a right meeting a duty, and a clear reply will say which of these applies to which field.

Field 04How to frame the request so it is answerable

The strongest erasure request is specific and grounded. Say which data you want erased, on which basis — purpose ended, consent withdrawn, or processing unlawful — and ask the operator to confirm what was erased, what was retained, the ground for each retention, and whether recipients were told. That structure forces a reply that distinguishes granted from refused, rather than a blanket answer that hides which part was a lawful retention and which part was an unexplained refusal. Keep the dated request and the reply together; together they are the file a regulator would read.