Bank and PayPal history: how much can be retrieved?

1404

I'm helping someone find transactions from years ago, and it appears that their Santander personal banking statements are only available for 7 years.  Anyone have experience of obtaining older transactions?

Also:  we've read that 7 years of personal PayPal history is downloadable.  But we can only seem to see 3 years.  Does anyone have any experience of downloading 7 years of PayPal?


Many thanks.

eskbanker

1404 said:

I'm helping someone find transactions from years ago, and it appears that their Santander personal banking statements are only available for 7 years.  Anyone have experience of obtaining older transactions?

All organisations processing personal data are required to have data management policies which entail only keeping such records for as long as necessary - there's no one-size-fits-all definition of that but seven years isn't unusual, so it's entirely plausible that Santander simply don't have any detailed transactional data beyond that and that it's been automatically deleted.

They could submit a Subject Access Request (details will be in the privacy policy section of Santander's website) seeking the oldest transactions on record, which could be further back than those available in statement form.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the danger of going paperless without securing soft copies of statements, so always worth downloading PDF copies (or even just data extracts) and storing these locally and/or in the cloud....

boingy

Santander will almost certainly have a list of every transaction you have ever made from day one. It might not be in a friendly statement format but you can get a copy by making a subject access request (SAR). I made an SAR with Nationwide last year and found they have all my statements going back to the late '80s and copies of everything with my signature on it from then too! They even offered transcriptions of every phone call, which I declined.

Nasqueron

boingy said:

Santander will almost certainly have a list of every transaction you have ever made from day one. It might not be in a friendly statement format but you can get a copy by making a subject access request (SAR). I made an SAR with Nationwide last year and found they have all my statements going back to the late '80s and copies of everything with my signature on it from then too! They even offered transcriptions of every phone call, which I declined.

What one bank does doesn't necessarily apply to any other - they may store data like this, they may not, a DSAR doesn't automatically mean everything, some things like archived data they may not be able to easily retrieve and can push back on under DSAR rules

1404

boingy said:

Santander will almost certainly have a list of every transaction you have ever made from day one. It might not be in a friendly statement format but you can get a copy by making a subject access request (SAR). I made an SAR with Nationwide last year and found they have all my statements going back to the late '80s and copies of everything with my signature on it from then too! They even offered transcriptions of every phone call, which I declined.

I did suspect they kept things rather than auto-delete anything older than 7 years. If the authorities asked for info then I'm imagine it would become available. I'll call Santander and ask.

eskbanker

1404 said:

boingy said:

Santander will almost certainly have a list of every transaction you have ever made from day one. It might not be in a friendly statement format but you can get a copy by making a subject access request (SAR). I made an SAR with Nationwide last year and found they have all my statements going back to the late '80s and copies of everything with my signature on it from then too! They even offered transcriptions of every phone call, which I declined.

I did suspect they kept things rather than auto-delete anything older than 7 years. If the authorities asked for info then I'm imagine it would become available. I'll call Santander and ask.

You can obviously suspect what you like, but, as above, the fact that one financial institution retains data doesn't signify anything about how another one deals with it.  As with any other organisation handling personal data, if they failed to produce requested (non-exempted) data in response to a legitimate SAR but were later found to have that data then this would be a breach of the Data Protection Act, which the ICO would be interested in....

Having said that, the point I made previously stands, i.e. the fact that they limit the routine direct availability of online statements to seven years doesn't in itself signify that the older underlying data has actually been wiped.

1404

eskbanker said:

1404 said:

boingy said:

Santander will almost certainly have a list of every transaction you have ever made from day one. It might not be in a friendly statement format but you can get a copy by making a subject access request (SAR). I made an SAR with Nationwide last year and found they have all my statements going back to the late '80s and copies of everything with my signature on it from then too! They even offered transcriptions of every phone call, which I declined.

I did suspect they kept things rather than auto-delete anything older than 7 years. If the authorities asked for info then I'm imagine it would become available. I'll call Santander and ask.

You can obviously suspect what you like, but, as above, the fact that one financial institution retains data doesn't signify anything about how another one deals with it.  As with any other organisation handling personal data, if they failed to produce requested (non-exempted) data in response to a legitimate SAR but were later found to have that data then this would be a breach of the Data Protection Act, which the ICO would be interested in....

Having said that, the point I made previously stands, i.e. the fact that they limit the routine direct availability of online statements to seven years doesn't in itself signify that the older underlying data has actually been wiped.

Would be interesting to know how far back Santander and PayPal go. 

eskbanker

1404 said:

eskbanker said:

1404 said:

boingy said:

Santander will almost certainly have a list of every transaction you have ever made from day one. It might not be in a friendly statement format but you can get a copy by making a subject access request (SAR). I made an SAR with Nationwide last year and found they have all my statements going back to the late '80s and copies of everything with my signature on it from then too! They even offered transcriptions of every phone call, which I declined.

I did suspect they kept things rather than auto-delete anything older than 7 years. If the authorities asked for info then I'm imagine it would become available. I'll call Santander and ask.

You can obviously suspect what you like, but, as above, the fact that one financial institution retains data doesn't signify anything about how another one deals with it.  As with any other organisation handling personal data, if they failed to produce requested (non-exempted) data in response to a legitimate SAR but were later found to have that data then this would be a breach of the Data Protection Act, which the ICO would be interested in....

Having said that, the point I made previously stands, i.e. the fact that they limit the routine direct availability of online statements to seven years doesn't in itself signify that the older underlying data has actually been wiped.

Would be interesting to know how far back Santander and PayPal go. 

Indeed - keep us posted when they respond (in the absence of any posters so far both knowing the answers and being prepared to share them)!

retiredbanker1

Just thinking aloud - if there is a dispute here - what about the 6 year limitation to claim?
If you are owed - tough, if you owe but have not acknowledged the debt - tough??

Hoenir

retiredbanker1 said:

Just thinking aloud - if there is a dispute here - what about the 6 year limitation to claim?
If you are owed - tough, if you owe but have not acknowledged the debt - tough??

From a loan account perspective. A transactional record of debits and credits will suffice. Very different to personal current account statement where the detail may well be erased and therefore contains nothing of evidential value. 

1404

I'm talking out the top of my head with no knowledge, but: I'm sure if a dispute arose that Santander (and PayPal) would come up with 7+ years of transaction history if they were required to. 

I'll call them tomorrow and ask.