TLDR: GDPR Article 15 gives you the right to request all of your data thats being processed and stored by websites/services. This lets you see *legally* exactly how much data services are hoovering up about you from right under your nose. You'll soon realise that big tech never forgets.

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Exercise it regularly, sure why not when its your right as an EU citizen now. I've done it a handful of times (sometimes multiple to the same website) and most of the time even if it takes anywhere from 2 weeks to a month to actually get its always interesting to read in the end. They'll often try to put you off by giving vague estimates such as yeah we can get you your data but it'll take uhhhh..... 30 days. Click request and never look back. Request your data again to be compiled as soon as they ship it off to you

Most recently it was spotify that forced me to request a comprehensive collection of all of the data they've hoarded through my limited use of the desktop application. How could I have been forced? Its quite simple actually.


Sunday: Stuck on some random playlist based on some random song and loved the tunes. Didn't think to follow the artists or add any songs to any playlists since oh well the music was only on in the background and was focusing mainly on games. Sure I'll just go back to my listening history when I remember again and see what songs I was listening to

Tuesday: Open up spotify and remember that I should try find what I was listening to. Nope, spotify is giving me the last 30 or so songs in my most recently played and absolutely nothing more. Couldn't for the life of me find it through how I stumbled onto it naturally two days before. After half an hour of searching to no success I knew I either was going to have to give up and never find the great songs again or give in and potentially spend a few hours hopelessly searching. UNTIL, a friend suggested I should just put in a GDPR request and if they store my history for longer than the last 30 songs (of course they do, that has never made a cent in profit is bound to keep as much of my data as they can) then I'll be in luck and will only have to spend a few minutes at most wrangling through the inevitable JSON jungle that they send back. As I said before its no skin off my back to wait 30 days so I requested every last byte that they'd collect up.

10 days later and I've got all 3 separate sets of data. Took me all of 2 minutes to open up and find the songs I was looking for in the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯