It took several weeks but I finally got my Reddit data export for my account. If it wasn’t already obvious, the direct messages there are not encrypted in any meaningful way. One interesting variable I found was in the file named “statistics”, there’s a variable named “is_deleted” which is set to false. This makes me wonder if, when you “delete” your account, they just flip this variable to disable login but still retain all of your user data. The file names are pretty self explanatory on what they contain, but the if you’re curious, the files in the export are:

account_gender.csv
approved_submitter_subreddits.csv
chat_history.csv
checkfile.csv
comment_headers.csv
comments.csv
comment_votes.csv
drafts.csv
filelist.txt
friends.csv
gilded_comments.csv
gilded_posts.csv
hidden_posts.csv
ip_logs.csv
linked_identities.csv
linked_phone_number.csv
message_headers.csv
messages.csv
moderated_subreddits.csv
multireddits.csv
poll_votes.csv
post_headers.csv
posts.csv
post_votes.csv
reddit_gold_information.csv
saved_comments.csv
saved_posts.csv
scheduled_posts.csv
statistics.csv
subscribed_subreddits.csv
twitter.csv
user_preferences.csv

  • abff08f4813c@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Check out https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/50981/Reddit-Data-Retrieval-Request-timeline-thread if you haven’t already.

    This makes me wonder if, when you “delete” your account, they just flip this variable to disable login but still retain all of your user data.

    I’m pretty sure this is the case. At least within some short timeframe (say 30 days or something).

    First, I’ve read on reddit about cases where folks had their reddit accounts hacked, and then the black hats deleted the accounts. But reddit was able to restore them.

    Second, I got permabanned, so I eventually left reddit and deleted my account. However, if you try to visit my account, you see that my account is blocked instead of seeing the user deleted account message.