IT·Science Talk

If a company with your data goes bankrupt, who owns your data then?

Lawyer here, but not in this area, so I'm curious what others know or have experienced. When a company holding customer data goes under, the data is often treated as an asset and can be sold to a buyer along with everything else.

That raises a lot of questions. Does the privacy policy you agreed to still bind the new owner? Can they use your data for something completely different? What about health data from a fitness app, or DNA from an ancestry service? Does anyone actually delete accounts before a company folds, or do we just forget?

And practically, how many of you have old accounts at services you no longer use? I counted mine last night and stopped at forty.