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In systems that deal with money, money-related data is virtually never deleted. The reason is the fear that deletion can be exploited somehow in the future, rather than the old data being actionable.

For example, if a customer registers with the name of a deleted customer, which will resurface some "unfinished" transactions or rules associated with the older version of the "same" customer that haven't been properly deleted but appeared to be deleted for a while.

Also, in general, deletion is very difficult because money doesn't just disappear. You'd need some sort of compaction (think: Git squash) rather than deletion to be able to balance the system's books... but then you'd be filling the system with fake transactions...

From my experience from working with these kinds of systems, the typical solution is to label entities with active/inactive labels to substitute deletion. But entities never go away.




I agree with you, but there is a plus for deleting old data.

If you are not required to keep the information for more than X years, and you still keep it, then you have to provide it when it's requested.

If you didn't keep it, then it can't be used against you.

If you delete it after it was requested, then you are in trouble.




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