Storage of data that no longer has a useful life is established by the data objects' user(s) and overcomes predetermined rules required by information management policies. An illustrative data agent may receive instructions from an illustrative storage manager to perform secondary copy operations for certain data objects. The instructions may instruct that expiry-marked data objects are to be treated based on parsing each data object's user-supplied expiry timeframe. The illustrative system (i) will delete expired data objects including expired secondary copies; (ii) will refrain from making secondary copies of expired data objects; and (iii) if an expiry-marked data object is not expired, the illustrative system will make secondary copies according to the instructions, but will track those expiry-marked secondary copies for future deletion after they expire, (iv) and will delete expired secondary copies even if the original expiry-marked data object has been deleted from the system prior to its expiration.