The second copy¶

Research brief, The Morporkian Civil Liberties Union (MCLU). Open file.

Two people share a carriage. One has turned off the record of journeys, the other has not. The journey appears in full in the history of the one who did not.

A mother stops sharing her position. Her son keeps using the family finder, and her movements can be read off his.

Somebody deletes a conversation. The other party still has every word of it.

The right to have a thing removed is held by the person the thing is about. The copy is held by somebody else, who has done nothing wrong and is under no obligation to them.

• Whose data is a record of two people doing something together?

• If a deletion right stops at the first copy, what was deleted?

Who else may hold a copy¶

• GDPR Article 17 and joint controllership: whether a second private individual holding the same record is a controller at all, and what the household exemption does here.

• How the major messaging services actually handle a deletion request across both ends, tested rather than read off a help page.

• Whether any authority has ruled on ride-share or journey histories held against the other passenger.

• Family location services: what the other party retains after one member leaves, and for how long.

• A Stalker’s Paradise, Freed and others, on the account holder receiving the other person’s record as an ordinary consequence of the billing arrangement.

Last updated: 17 September 2026