Account Deletion Demand

[Shawn Gossman]

How do respond to forum members who request you delete their account?

I've seen an instance where a staff member (on a forum that didn't belong to me) quit the team and demanded the forum owner delete their account. They cited various European data protection acts and laws and said not deleting it would be a violation of such laws/acts. The forum owner ended up deleting the account but changed the name to something generic to retain their content on the forum.

How would you react? Would you do the same above or something different? What about if they demanded you delete their posts, as well?

 

[Tracy]

Use the XF process. They show as deleted user in the database of user information kept. Their posts, if they publicly posted "protected" information is fair game since they had already put it out in the public domain.

 

[Heatman]

Use the XF process. They show as deleted user in the database of user information kept. Their posts, if they publicly posted "protected" information is fair game since they had already put it out in the public domain.

This is exactly what most forums owners do. Even Forum Promotion do the same thing because I can still see so many ex members their account was deleted but never the post. I still miss Zandrajoi not being on the forum again.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Use the XF process. They show as deleted user in the database of user information kept. Their posts, if they publicly posted "protected" information is fair game since they had already put it out in the public domain.

And you can always put it in your terms as a condition if they join.

 

[Tracy]

And you can always put it in your terms as a condition if they join.

A few modifications really need to be made to what I think is the default XF one (and probably others)

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

These terms may be changed at any time without notice.

The last line is problematic. There needs to be a way to notify the users when the TOS change and the new ones must be accepted. Ideally those that refuse to accept the new TOS should have their account put in a moderation status pending deletion within a set number of days with a warning to the user of the consequences.

The first part has to do with their posts. They cannot "revoke" it at any time, but their posts (username/profile) can be anonymized. If they post other information in their posts, that is then on them and it is unrealistic to require every post be scrubbed of information they put into the public view.

In the privacy policy this

You also have the right to request the erasure of your personal data. Please contact us if you would like us to remove your personal data.

can be modified to clarify that their posts will only have their user profile information anonymized and their names on the posts replaced with a place holder name but the post content will not be changed.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

The last line is problematic. There needs to be a way to notify the users when the TOS change and the new ones must be accepted. Ideally those that refuse to accept the new TOS should have their account put in a moderation status pending deletion within a set number of days with a warning to the user of the consequences.

Isn't there a way to force users to accept new terms through the software?

 

[Tracy]

Isn't there a way to force users to accept new terms through the software?

You can enable that. But all it does is force them to accept the agreement before they can continue into the site. But it is also a "one shot deal" that you have to manually do after each policy update to force it upon all members.
There has been requests to offer the user the choice to either accept or refuse and upon refusal disabling the account.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

There has been requests to offer the user the choice to either accept or refuse and upon refusal disabling the account.

I can agree with this as being a core feature out of the box. With all the new policies out there, it would make sense.

Is there a plugin for this? All those "extra features" plugins by Xon makes me wonder if there might be one that does that.

 

[Tracy]

Is there a plugin for this? All those "extra features" plugins by Xon makes me wonder if there might be one that does that.

Not that I'm aware of. Next time I'm over at Xon's site grabbing updates direct from his alert system I may inquire.
But it would be better if it was built into the core product. But that entails the core developers actually giving their license holders what they can use.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Not that I'm aware of. Next time I'm over at Xon's site grabbing updates direct from his alert system I may inquire.
But it would be better if it was built into the core product. But that entails the core developers actually giving their license holders what they can use.

I agree THAT would be a good core feature since policies online impact everyone.