Your rights over your own data
Access, deletion and portability explained in plain terms, plus the practical steps for closing an account and arranging what happens to your digital life later.
You have more say over the data companies hold about you than most people ever use. You can ask an organisation what it has on you, ask for a copy, have mistakes corrected, have the record deleted in many cases, and take your data with you when you move to a competitor. The rights are written into law. The hard part is knowing which request to send, who to send it to, and what a company is allowed to refuse.
Start with what you can actually ask a company to do, because the wording of the request changes the answer you get back. When you are finished with a service, close the account properly instead of logging out and hoping, since a dormant account keeps its data and keeps turning up in breaches. Once you are thinking this way, it is worth arranging what happens to your accounts after you die, so somebody can reach your photos and your email without a court order. If AI assistants are part of your routine, stopping your chats being used for training is a separate switch again.
Articles in this hub
- Your data rights: what you can ask a company to doAccess, correction, deletion, portability and objection explained in plain terms, plus how to send a request that a company has to answer.
- Deleting an online account properly, not just logging outWhy deactivation is not deletion, the order that keeps you from losing access to other services, and what to do when there is no delete button.
- Digital legacy: what happens to your accounts after you dieThe practical arrangements that let a family reach photos, money and accounts later, and the ones that quietly lock everything away forever.