Data privacy review

Data Privacy Review

A practical privacy audit. The goal isn't a certificate on the wall — it's that you can answer "what personal data do you have, why, for how long, and where?" without scrambling.

This is engineering guidance, not legal advice. For regulated industries or cross-border specifics, involve a DPO or counsel.

When to use

• "Review for GDPR / CCPA / privacy compliance"
• "Are we handling personal data correctly?"
• "Audit data collection / retention / sharing"
• "Implement subject rights (deletion, export)"
• "Handle a data subject request"

Scope first

Privacy reviews sprawl quickly. Pick one:

Scope	Focus
Data inventory	What data do we hold, where, why
New feature review	What's this feature collecting and processing
Subject rights	DSAR / deletion / export pipelines
Vendor / sub-processor	Sharing with third parties
Breach readiness	Detection, notification, response

Procedure

1. Build (or read) the data inventory: what personal data, where stored, who can access, what for, how long
2. Map data flows: collection → processing → storage → sharing → deletion
3. Walk the checklist below per scope
4. Surface gaps with severity and concrete fixes

Checklist

Data minimization (the most important one)

• Each collected field has a documented purpose ("we need email to send receipts")
• No collecting "just in case" — fields without purpose get removed
• Optional fields are actually optional in the UI
• Truncate/hash where full data isn't needed (e.g., IP-prefix instead of full IP)
• Logs and analytics aren't smuggling PII you didn't intend to collect
• Don't store what you can fetch on demand from an authoritative source

Rule of thumb: if you can't write a sentence explaining why this field exists, delete it.

Legal basis (GDPR)

Every processing activity needs one of:

• Consent — freely given, specific, informed, unambiguous; revocable; logged
• Contract — necessary to provide the service the user signed up for
• Legal obligation — required by law (tax records, KYC)
• Vital interests — life-or-death (rare)
• Public task — gov / public-interest bodies
• Legitimate interest — balanced against user rights; documented in a LIA

Each field/feature should be tagged with the legal basis. "Because we want to" is not on the list.

Consent (when that's the basis)

• Consent is opt-in, not pre-checked
• Granular: separate consent per purpose (newsletter ≠ product analytics ≠ third-party ads)
• Withdrawal is as easy as giving consent (no "email us to opt out")
• Consent records stored (what, when, version of the notice they saw)
• No "consent walls" before access to core functionality

Special categories (GDPR Art 9)

Extra protection for: race, ethnicity, political opinions, religion, union membership, genetic, biometric (for ID), health, sex life, sexual orientation.

• Avoid collecting these unless absolutely necessary
• Explicit consent (or another Art 9 condition) required
• Separate access controls and logging

Subject rights

Implement these as actual pipelines, not "email us":

Right	What's required
Access (DSAR)	Return a copy of all personal data you hold on the user, in a machine-readable format, within 30 days
Rectification	User can correct inaccurate data
Erasure ("right to be forgotten")	Delete on request, subject to legal-retention overrides. Includes backups (or documented retention overlap window).
Restriction	Halt processing while a dispute is resolved
Portability	Provide data in a structured, common format (JSON, CSV)
Object	Stop processing for direct marketing, etc.
Automated decision-making	Right to human review of automated decisions with significant effect

• DSAR endpoint or process exists and has been tested end-to-end
• Deletion really deletes (no orphan rows in audit tables, analytics, backups beyond retention)
• Identity verification step before fulfilling (don't ship someone's data to whoever asks)
• SLA: most regulations require ≤30 days

Retention

• Each data class has a documented retention period tied to its purpose
• Retention enforced automatically (scheduled deletion job), not by hope
• Backups have a retention policy and overlap window documented
• Logs containing PII have a retention shorter than raw business data
• Customers offboarded → grace period → deletion

Cross-border transfers

If data leaves the user's jurisdiction:

• EU → US: appropriate mechanism (SCCs + supplementary measures, or adequacy decision)
• Map of which sub-processors are where
• Per-region data residency documented if you promise it
• Schrems II analysis done for high-risk transfers

Vendors & sub-processors

• DPA (Data Processing Agreement) signed with every processor of personal data
• Sub-processor list publicly available, kept up to date
• Vendor security review on file (SOC 2, ISO 27001, or your own questionnaire)
• Onboarding new sub-processor triggers customer notification per your DPA

Technical & organizational measures (TOMs)

• Encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest for sensitive data
• Access controls: least privilege, MFA for admins, periodic review
• Audit logs for who accessed what personal data
• Pseudonymization where it serves the purpose (analytics IDs ≠ user IDs)
• Production data not used in dev/test (use synthetic or anonymized)

Breach readiness

• Detection: alerts for anomalous access, large exports, exfil patterns
• Runbook: triage, contain, notify
• 72-hour notification to supervisory authority (GDPR) — process tested
• User notification path if high risk to rights and freedoms
• Breach log kept (even for non-notifiable incidents)

Children

If you might serve under-16s (or under-13 in the US):

• Parental consent flow
• No behavioral advertising
• Reduced data collection
• Age-gating where required

Quick scans

# Find places that log full email / IP / phone (heuristic)
grep -RInE 'log.*(email|phone|ssn|address)\b' --include='*.{js,ts,php,py,rb,go}' .

# Direct PII in URLs (query strings end up in access logs)
grep -RInE 'GET .*\?(email|phone|name|ssn)=' --include='*.{js,ts,php,py}' .

# Long-lived tokens / no expiry
grep -RInE 'expires_in.*(86400|604800|2592000|31536000)' --include='*.{js,ts,php,py}' .

# Data residency assumptions
grep -RInE 'us-east-1|eu-west-1' --include='*.{tf,yaml,yml}' . | head

Heuristic, not authoritative.

Output format

## Privacy review: <scope>

**Data inventory snapshot:**
| Field | Purpose | Legal basis | Retention | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| email | login, transactional email | contract | account life + 30d | EU |
| ip_address | abuse prevention | legitimate interest | 30 days | EU |
| analytics_id | product analytics | consent | 13 months | US (DPA: …) |

### 🔴 Blockers
- <finding>. **Risk:** <regulatory + reputational>. **Fix:** <…>.

### 🟠 Major
- …

### 🟡 Minor
- …

### Subject-rights readiness
- ✅ Access: <how, tested when>
- ✅ Deletion: <how, tested when>
- ❌ Portability: not implemented

### Sub-processor list status
- ✅ public list maintained
- ❌ DPA with <vendor> outstanding

### Recommendations (priority order)
1. …
2. …

Anti-patterns

• ❌ "We don't have any personal data" (you do — emails, IPs, names, usernames)
• ❌ Free-text legal-basis field "for business reasons"
• ❌ Pre-ticked consent checkboxes
• ❌ "Deletion" that leaves the row but blanks the email
• ❌ Production PII in dev/staging
• ❌ Logging request bodies that contain PII
• ❌ "Email us at privacy@" instead of an actual DSAR pipeline
• ❌ Treating privacy as a one-time compliance project rather than ongoing engineering
• ❌ Storing analytics PII forever because "we might want it"
• ❌ Promising "we never share data" while integrating five analytics SDKs

Tips

• Privacy by design is cheaper than retrofitting. Add the legal-basis field to the data model from day one.
• Tag fields with metadata: @personal, @sensitive, @retention=30d. A linter can then enforce that logging never references @sensitive fields without redaction.
• Run a deletion drill quarterly with a synthetic test user — actually request, actually fulfill, actually verify.
• Document the purpose alongside the field definition, not in a separate doc that drifts.
• Customer-facing privacy notice should match what the code actually does. Disagreement is the most common source of fines.

References

• GDPR full text
• CCPA / CPRA — California
• ICO guidance (UK) — readable practical guidance
• CNIL (France) developer's guide — engineer-focused
• OWASP Top 10 Privacy Risks