Since I have rebooted the SQL Saturday franchise as an independent 501.c.3 corporation, I have gotten a number of data erasure requests. These seem to mainly come from Mine, a company that helps people manage their data online and ask for removal from organizations.
This happens a few times a month and the emails look like this:
When I get these, I do take them seriously. This is not only a legal requirement under the GDPR and other laws, but it’s also a moral obligation to manage data appropriately.
The new SQL Saturday corporation, which was formed in 2001 independently of the previous PASS organization, started with no data. I created a mailing list that was populated from nothing by people signing up. You can sign up and manage your subscrption yourself through the Mailchimp system. I also encourage you to pass along the list to others who are interested in SQL Saturday and have them sign up.
When I get a request, I follow this process:
- Log into mailchimp and search for the email address
- If I find a match, I delete the account
- I respond to the user with a confirmation of the deletion, or with the text below.
We do not have any information on your account. The former PASS organization deleted all information prior to their bankruptcy. You can contact the former administrator of that data at ccevent.com
The current SQL Saturday corporation was formed in 2021 as an independent US 501.c.3 charitable organization.
Steve Jones President, SQL Saturday
To date, of the 40 or 50 responses I’ve sent, none of them have had any data in our system. I don’t expect to actually find any, as we received no data as part of the franchise donation from Redgate, and to my knowledge, they received no data from the PASS organization in the sale.
Since I have little data with SQL Saturday, this has been easy, but it did take a bit of thought and time to decide how to handle things. I do encourage all organizations to do this, as I expect more data erasure requests to come in the future to all sorts of businesses. While you might not delete all data, or have reasons why you don’t, someone should spend time to determine how you handle these.
If you have any questions, please reach out to the webmaster account at this domain.
Remind others to register here: http://eepurl.com/hwVBKn