Pushed for Data Access Across Giants—Some Companies Unwillingly Deleteed My Records

To test whether multinational platforms honored legally mandated privacy requests, I began by contacting Crunchbase, a well‑known database of technology startups. On August 17 I emailed Crunchbase’s privacy team outlining the rights I wished to exercise, explicitly stating that I did not want any data removed. My message read, “I am not requesting deletion at this time. Please do not treat this as a deletion request.” Two days later an auto‑response arrived informing me that my Crunchbase account had been permanently erased. Subsequent follow‑up communication clarified that while the account was gone, supplementary information stored elsewhere remained untouched, and a new registration would be required for further access.

Quickly escalating the matter, I reached out to BeenVerified, a large public records search engine, on August 19. I explained in detail that I was a California resident submitting an access request rather than asking for its removal. Within hours a BeenVerified support agent replied that the individual report had already been vanished from the search results and that the corresponding phone number and email address had been stripped from the display. The claim was made that such an omission should occur within 24 hours, yet it was carried out instantly.

When I later reminded the support team that I had specifically demanded data access—not deletion—representatives denied my assertion, insisting they could not confirm my identity despite having seen portions of my profile earlier in the thread. Those denials left little room for constructive dialogue.

Across these encounters—at Crunchbase and BeenVerified—the consistent theme was stark: every effort to obtain my personal information according to statutory standards resulted in unwanted removals or permanent account deletions. Both organizations pointed to accidental processing errors, attributing the mishandling to human staff members rather than automated systems. Nevertheless, the pattern revealed a troubling gap between users’ documented intentions and the actions taken by the institutions responsible for safeguarding private data.

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