No, it’s not at all legal for the company to do this. Reply and remind them they have one calendar month to comply from the date of your original request, otherwise you will make a complaint to which ever information regulator is correct for the juridiction they’re operating in.

I’m a lawyer specialising in Data Privacy, reply here if you need more help on this one.

Also feel free to name the company.

Name and shame the company

expired

No. They are obligated to obey the law as written. They don’t get to create conditions.

GDPR clearly states you can contact any part of the organisation with your request. You can make your request verbally or in writing and they must acknowledge it. They can't refuse and make you use their app.

For fun send them a Subject Access Request and if they don't acknowledge it, report them to the ICO (if you're in the UK)

Name & shame.

Simply ask for the official company name, registration number and country as well as the prereree means of communication that they would like your local data authorities to contact them on.

Also make a 1 star review, stating that you are in talks with your local gdpr authorities about their way of handling privacy.

This worked for me last time a company asked me to download an app to delete my account

I had this before, though not through a direct communication. Someone had gotten my email credentials someho and installed a company's app and made an account. When I went through the support pages on the company's site to find out how to delete the account the only listed way was through the app itself.

They were accommodating and helpful when I emailed the company about it though. I just told them that I can't agree to the privacy policy and thus cannot install the app but still need the account to be deleted. They did it.

It is absolutely not

They were very friendly imo. No need to speak legalese or to be rude.

Just tell them that you can't or don't want to install the app.

If they don't help you, then you proceed to remind them that you are not required to install anything for them to comply with GDPR.

Time to speak corporate to them. Write out a GDPR removal demand letter. And mail it to them certified or whatever corporate mail does in your local jurisdiction.

I had a simmilar situation with Nicehash (crypto shit company), but I had 2fa enabled and just wanted to unsubscribe from useless newsletters. They asked for a photo of me holding a paper with my personal information. Still didnt solve that, but some comments here might help, following

eBay does this too. They told me they can't access my data to delete it, that I have to log in with their website or app and send information to just get my data, let alone have it deleted.

It's way too easy to spoof email "from" addresses.

There should be a way to do it through their website though. Requiring an app is just stupid.