Forum account anonymization and data export is now available

yore

admin I requested exporting my data and shortly received a forum notification with the link. However, it leads to a page with the following message:

The page you requested could not be found.

Return to GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

GrapheneOS

@yore That's strange, it's working for others.

gk7ncklxlts99w1

Just want to say, Flarum might be the best forum software out there. Really well designed.

mrjonipeter

Flarum stands out as one of the best forum platforms clean design smooth performance and great usability

spot

I'm interested to know what anonymisation means. A username isn't an identity unless it can be regarded as an alias. Changing a username has no effect on anonymity that I can deduce. GDPR personal information might be held by a forum or website as a legally recognized name or a traceable alias, or a phone number, or an address, or an ID code (NHS, NI, Passport etc). In that sense one could have a right to erasure, but surely not based on just a username. If anyone can cite an authority I'd be interested.
It's a different matter if a user posts content clearly identifying themself or a third party, either of whom might well have a subsequent right of erasure.

other8026

spot Changing a username has no effect on anonymity

If I recall correctly, the extension creates a new user with a generic name, moves posts to that user, then deletes the old account. All data except the public posts ends up getting removed.

GrapheneOS

spot It doesn't keep the account but rather it deletes it completely. The public posts have already been repeatedly indexed by search engines and archived elsewhere regardless.

It's a different matter if a user posts content clearly identifying themself or a third party, either of whom might well have a subsequent right of erasure.

If someone wants content deleted, they'll have to ask and it can't simply be trivial posts not tied to them. It would waste far too much of our time. No one should post personal information but if someone does by mistake we can remove. Users also get 10 minutes to remove it themselves. Unfortunately, due to people abusing the deletion feature to go back and delete a whole bunch of their posts after they got an answer to a question or out of spite, we had to limit that to 10 minutes like edits.

spot

Thank you both for clearing the terms of reference, that was helpful. I agree there's an edit window for second thoughts and it might be ten minutes, I've been known to set it as a day. You're left with a thread that can't change at the whim of a user, which is necessary if the author decides to want to look good a week later with an update.

Dealing months after the event with an irate threat of litigation is something any forum might be faced with, and doing the least amount of harm is balanced against the legislative framework. In practice the requirement is uncontentious.

The far side is when someone demands the removal of all their posts, at which I draw the line and there's no legal necessity. Twice I've been faced with an irate demand from a moderator with sufficient access rights to do it themself, and that's down to bad admin in my opinion when they go ahead before slamming the door. There is, as best I can see, no legal right to be forgotten any longer in a European/UK setting - the right of erasure extends to personal information and no further. And in the States, presumably, it's still the Wild West and a bonanza for lawyers.

DeletedUser381

I've started my deletion request a week ago, but the account is still there. :/

How can I delete posts?

GrapheneOS

DeletedUser381

I've started my deletion request a week ago, but the account is still there. :/

It takes 30 days to happen automatically. All of the private data (email, password hash, etc.) is wiped and the account is renamed to a placeholder account name.

How can I delete posts?

Our forum puts every thread into the sitemap so everything gets quickly search indexed and archived by multiple archives. This site is heavily crawled by bots. There's no way to get things removed from those archives, so deleting content here wouldn't serve much purpose.

Posts can only be edited or deleted for 10 minutes afterwards. If there are specific things you want deleted, it can be done manually by moderators. It would be up to you to figure out how to convince archives, search engines, etc. to remove the content.

People can't simply ask questions, get answers from people and then delete everything. That would ruin the thread for other people to benefit from the information. Both editing and deletion were being abused prior to the time limits.

DeletedUser403

how long should it take for the deletion email to arrive?
less than 15min right?

DeletedUser403

DeletedUser403
I do recieve email change emails, so the issue has to be with the forum's account deletion function specifially.

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