Meaningful Data Erasure in the Presence of Dependencies

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chakraborty, Vishal, Kaminsky, Youri, Mehrotra, Sharad, Naumann, Felix, Nawab, Faisal, Pappachan, Primal, Sadoghi, Mohammad, Venkatasubramanian, Nalini
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chakraborty, Vishal
Kaminsky, Youri
Mehrotra, Sharad
Naumann, Felix
Nawab, Faisal
Pappachan, Primal
Sadoghi, Mohammad
Venkatasubramanian, Nalini
author_facet Chakraborty, Vishal
Kaminsky, Youri
Mehrotra, Sharad
Naumann, Felix
Nawab, Faisal
Pappachan, Primal
Sadoghi, Mohammad
Venkatasubramanian, Nalini
contents Data regulations like GDPR require systems to support data erasure but leave the definition of "erasure" open to interpretation. This ambiguity makes compliance challenging, especially in databases where data dependencies can lead to erased data being inferred from remaining data. We formally define a precise notion of data erasure that ensures any inference about deleted data, through dependencies, remains bounded to what could have been inferred before its insertion. We design erasure mechanisms that enforce this guarantee at minimal cost. Additionally, we explore strategies to balance cost and throughput, batch multiple erasures, and proactively compute data retention times when possible. We demonstrate the practicality and scalability of our algorithms using both real and synthetic datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_00343
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Meaningful Data Erasure in the Presence of Dependencies
Chakraborty, Vishal
Kaminsky, Youri
Mehrotra, Sharad
Naumann, Felix
Nawab, Faisal
Pappachan, Primal
Sadoghi, Mohammad
Venkatasubramanian, Nalini
Databases
Data regulations like GDPR require systems to support data erasure but leave the definition of "erasure" open to interpretation. This ambiguity makes compliance challenging, especially in databases where data dependencies can lead to erased data being inferred from remaining data. We formally define a precise notion of data erasure that ensures any inference about deleted data, through dependencies, remains bounded to what could have been inferred before its insertion. We design erasure mechanisms that enforce this guarantee at minimal cost. Additionally, we explore strategies to balance cost and throughput, batch multiple erasures, and proactively compute data retention times when possible. We demonstrate the practicality and scalability of our algorithms using both real and synthetic datasets.
title Meaningful Data Erasure in the Presence of Dependencies
topic Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00343