Any kind of lending facility, for example, is required, by law, to retain identity documents for an extended period of time - we're talking around five years _post_ account closure.
So most businesses are not permitted to just delete the data.
Any kind of lending facility, for example, is required, by law, to retain identity documents for an extended period of time - we're talking around five years _post_ account closure.
So most businesses are not permitted to just delete the data.
Back In The Day, if somewhere like a car hire agency wanted to record proof of identity they'd photocopy your driver's license on paper, and store it in a filing cabinet. The computer record of a customer's account would just say "driving license checked, on file at branch #1234"
Security-wise this comes with obvious downsides - but as protection against cyberattack, it's pretty much the gold standard.
A system abandoned decades ago? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gold_standard
Regulatory retention is a valid reason for some of this data to exist. It isn't a blanket justification for every intermediary in the verification chain to retain its own permanent copy. If anything, that makes minimizing the number of copies even more important.