| CPC G06F 21/6245 (2013.01) [G06F 21/6227 (2013.01); G06F 21/6254 (2013.01); H04L 2209/42 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims |

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1. A method for more efficiently storing and removing personally identifiable information (PII) in a data storage system, the method comprising:
receiving, by one or more devices, a request to store data to one or more data records in a data storage system, the data comprising one or more data items of PII of a user, joined PII and non-PII;
storing, by the one or more devices, the one or more PII data items, the one or more joined PII data items and the one or more non-PII data items to a data record of the one or more data records;
identifying, by an agent of the one or more devices, that the data record has the one or more PII, one or more joined PII and one or more non-PII data items within the data;
generating, by the one or more devices, a PII user identifier for the user;
replacing, by the one or more devices, in the data record the one or more PII data items with a first set of links to the one or more PII data items stored in a PII data table in association with the PII user identifier and the one or more joined PII data items with a second set of links to the one or more joined PII data items stored in a joined PII data table in association with the PII user identifier;
receiving, by the one or more devices, a second request to remove PII associated with the user;
replacing, by the one or more devices, at least the one or more PII data items in the PII data table with a value indicating the PII data item has been removed;
validating, by a removal and validation agent, that removal of the PII associated with the user has occurred throughout the data storage system; and
providing, by the removal and validation agent responsive to validating, a report that the PII associated with the user has been removed.
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