Possibility to Delete Account by user

danielperez9430

In Europe we have the RGPD law that obliges us to give users the possibility of a right to be forgotten. That is, they can eliminate their accounts. As far as I can see in Flarum, that possibility does not exist yet. Nor is there an extension for that. I was wondering if you have something planned on that subject

Antoine

danielperez9430 If you go to the user's profile, there's an option for that in the Controls menu but it's only available to admins.

Delete a user

jordanjay29

danielperez9430 I'd have to read the specific law, but I believe sites need to allow an avenue for deletion but aren't required to provide a delete button per se. An email address where deletion requests are sent and honored might suffice. Again, I'd need to read the law.

luceos

jordanjay29 you are correct. As long as you clearly state what the process for deletion is and make that process easily available, it's fine.

thephotographyblog

luceos There should still eventually be that functionality built into the Flarum core. It shouldn’t even have to be an extension. Account deletion is a fundamental feature for any sort of membership site.

0E800

@danielperez9430
Possibly an extensions that provides a clickable link that sends a notification to forum administrator or moderator of the users request. (convenience)

Else, as @jordanjay29 mentioned;
so long as the administrator or moderator is doing their yob, a post with a subject line or post content that includes something like:

@mod - Please remove my account, I no longer wish to be affiliated with this forum.

You are complying to the users rights to have their account removed.

Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

Related reading:
♦ What is the GDPR? GeekWire’s guide to new European data protection laws that impact the cloud
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/gdpr-geekwires-guide-new-european-data-protection-laws-impact-cloud/

♦ Data Security and Cybercrime in Finland
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9d2dd419-3a42-464a-8df0-ed1ffb9dedd7

♦ France weighs a law to rein in ‘fake news,’ raising fears for freedom of speech
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-weighs-a-law-to-rein-in-fake-news-raising-fears-for-freedom-of-speech/2018/01/10/78256962-f558-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?utm_term=.bba8b5666235

IMO - I believe the law was mostly intended for google spiders that crawl thought the internet. IE: Old farts worrying about their private data being open to modern search methods; and/or not having the money to hire people to fix their legacy system.

luceos

manny I totally agree with that.

thephotographyblog can't remember I used the word "extension" anywhere ? Seems like we all agree it should be part of core, but it should also be behind a permission in order to allow for easier configuration.

manny

In my opinion, it is not user friendly to make delete the account so annoying (send mail to moderator and wait until approved) while registering is very easy. It would be nice to have a configurable permission if users can delete their own account or not. So the admin can decide for himself how easy users can delete their accounts.

manny

luceos yeah, however I am not sure what the status of this possible feature is. It has been already discussed here: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/242-disable-account-delete
Someone had removed the configurable permission for deleting account, but it was some years ago.

Tikey

manny here: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/242-disable-account-delete

Quoted thread is not loading. What are the current decisions on this topic?

clarkwinkelmann

Tikey you should be able to access that other discussion.

There is no final decision at this point. It would be best developed as an extension first, and could be added to Flarum core later if we see enough interest.

On this forum we decided to handle account deletion on a case-by-case basis.

Netzwrk

Hi,

Please include a standard feature for the user to delete his forum account.

Also, is it correct that changing the username becomes impossible after a certain number of messages were posted? Or is it admins of some forums running on Flarum who make it impossible?

This, combined, makes it impossible for the user to not leave digital traces. In many countries, it is legally granted to people to request the erasure of their personal data. For example, here is EU regulation.

tankerkiller125

Netzwrk As noted in other comments in this discussion the GDPR law only requires that users can request the deletion of their data. Which can easily be done by create a post like "Please Delete My Account" and mentioning a moderator/admin. This is exactly the way that we handle that here on discuss.

As far as username changes Flarum by default does not allow users to change their username. Instead Admins can change their username upon request or there is an extension that allows users to request a username change, but still required admin approval (we use the extension)