GDPR - Right to be forgotten #398 (probably)

newsgroupmonkey_

I've been a member of a forum for a number of years. Due to the nature of the forum, we are forced to use, as our nicknames, something that can identify us (I don't want to go into further details, but let's just say that someone could easily find out my real name, my employer and for many, their home address if they're on the public electoral roll).

As we all know, forums can be toxic places (this place is pretty good, but not invincible) and things we say can be misconstrued and used against us. For instance, I could make a joke about BMW drivers and indicators. Someone might notice that I worked for BMW and copy this into an email to my employer (I don't, but you get my point).

So......

If I write formally to the Administrator of the forum (who ironically can easily be identified because of the nickname) or domain owner, a lot of places say that they would simply "anonymise" my nickname. Which would be great. Except that people quote posts or indeed manually reply quoting my nickname. The search facility would easily find my nickname.

I'm a tech. I know exactly how to do this at database level. But I'm pretty certain that the Administrator of said forum doesn't. And frankly, because of the kind of toxic place that this has become (and they are party to it), they'd probably refuse anyway. I think I'm probably going to have to go legal to get them to even anonymise my nickname.

Thoughts?

user1977

In which jurisdiction is the forum based?

RefluentBeans

I’m confused in what resolution you’re seeking. Did you want your username changed, your username changed and them to go back through your old posts to change the username, or to delete your account and data associated with it. 

If you delete your account does it change the user name to [deleted]? Or just also delete your posts? In addition the replies - are the replies like on this forum where they’re basically text lines in a comment of ‘A User said <quote block>’ or Reddit where it’s more stratified. If the former, I can’t imagine that deleting your account or changing the username will change these quotes as they’re actually in the text comments, not in the UI element (so presumably pulled from a different part of the database). 

Either way, it doesn’t seem like you’ve started any process yet. I would attempt to get the resolution you want first. In terms of data rights, I don’t think it matters where the data is stored and processed (they can put in general terms about storing it on other servers) but I think the important part is the data origin - I.e. a UK or EU citizen. So you should have a right to delete/view/edit your data in all countries. Obviously enforcing this is another matter…

If it’s in the EU they should be much more accepting to delete the data. It all depends on the size of the forum to their exposure to these sort of regulations for international. A small forum with 400 members in the US probably hasn’t had much exposure to GDPR, larger forums will have though 

400ixl

Firstly, making people have usernames etc that make it easy to identify them is not illegal and often a good thing if it makes people think about what they type.

Unless you have been posting things you really shouldn't be in a public forum then you appear to be going way over the top. If you no longer want to be a member, get your forum name anonymised, stop using the forum and move on with life. Any threads will soon drop off the front pages if the sight is in anyway active.

If you are a tech then you would know that database tables can be linked in some very strange ways, and just going in and editing at a database level can have some very unwelcome outcomes.

You will likely also find that there are items in the T&C's that limit what they will do and not do should you want to leave the site.

If however you have been doing things on the site you regret, maybe you need to be very specific and highlight the exact posts you would like editing. Hopefully that will be a small number and the admins may be willing to do that.

MattMattMattUK

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

I've been a member of a forum for a number of years. Due to the nature of the forum, we are forced to use, as our nicknames, something that can identify us (I don't want to go into further details, but let's just say that someone could easily find out my real name, my employer and for many, their home address if they're on the public electoral roll).

As we all know, forums can be toxic places (this place is pretty good, but not invincible) and things we say can be misconstrued and used against us. For instance, I could make a joke about BMW drivers and indicators. Someone might notice that I worked for BMW and copy this into an email to my employer (I don't, but you get my point).

So......

If I write formally to the Administrator of the forum (who ironically can easily be identified because of the nickname) or domain owner, a lot of places say that they would simply "anonymise" my nickname. Which would be great. Except that people quote posts or indeed manually reply quoting my nickname. The search facility would easily find my nickname.

I'm a tech. I know exactly how to do this at database level. But I'm pretty certain that the Administrator of said forum doesn't. And frankly, because of the kind of toxic place that this has become (and they are party to it), they'd probably refuse anyway. I think I'm probably going to have to go legal to get them to even anonymise my nickname.

Thoughts?

Stop worrying about something which is almost entirely irrelevant.

RefluentBeans

400ixl said:

Firstly, making people have usernames etc that make it easy to identify them is not illegal and often a good thing if it makes people think about what they type.

Unless you have been posting things you really shouldn't be in a public forum then you appear to be going way over the top. If you no longer want to be a member, get your forum name anonymised, stop using the forum and move on with life. Any threads will soon drop off the front pages if the sight is in anyway active.

I actually think this is terrible advice. If you have an account on a forum linked to your email, and you no longer use the site your data should be deleted. Otherwise you’re trusting that the site will just keep your data safe - not an easy feat. If it’s your data, you should be able to have it deleted when you’ve done using the site. It’s not theirs to have. If it’s in their database and they get compromised, then your data is out there. 

Additionally - deleting data from defunct email addresses is hard. You should be able to delete data when you leave a site.

born_again

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

newsgroupmonkey_

Thanks all.
This is UK based.

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Yup, I'm aware. In fact, I would be disappointed if all the content of my posts disappeared as some of it should be helpful to others.

In terms of "Does it show up as [Deleted]"? I've no idea. I know people permanently banned from the forum are still showing up as their usernames.

For those who say "Yeah, just ignore it, it'll go away", my username could easily be traced back to my home address, my job and other identifiable data.

RefluentBeans

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Off topic but not sure how well that conforms to the law. If someone posted something illegal, the forum would attempt to claim that they act as a platform, and thus users own their content. 

Can’t have it both ways of owning what you want and then not owning what puts you at risk. You can of course state that by posting on a forum that you grant the forum owners a license to reproduce the content, but that doesn’t mean ownership. That’s what places like Reddit do. 

That way platforms can do their best to detect illicit activities (like copyright etc) without taking ownership of the content published on their platform. And there’s an innocent infringers defence if they reproduce something that the poster originally posted but then the forum reproduced under their terms. 

RefluentBeans

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

Thanks all.
This is UK based.

born_again said:

What you also have to remember is that on many forums. What you post becomes their property. 

As a mod on a forum, we often get requests to delete user & all their posts. Yes we will delete user (gives then a random bunch of letters as a name) but any content posted will not be deleted, unless it breaks forum rules.

Yup, I'm aware. In fact, I would be disappointed if all the content of my posts disappeared as some of it should be helpful to others.

In terms of "Does it show up as [Deleted]"? I've no idea. I know people permanently banned from the forum are still showing up as their usernames.

For those who say "Yeah, just ignore it, it'll go away", my username could easily be traced back to my home address, my job and other identifiable data.

I think you can ask for clarity. If the issue is only your username, and they force you to use something that can easily identify you, they should remove that data.

I agree - the issue is if the forum uses the style of quotes like on this forum - I’m not a SysAdmin or anything, but I imagine that if I wanted to change my name, it would only update future posts and not previous posts. I suppose you could find all the incidents of your username being used in quotes and then ask for those to be edited. 

It seems a poor choice to make you use a username which can ID you in all honesty. 

DullGreyGuy

It will depend on what forum software they use and how it stores things. 

Changing a username is normally an easy task, that will normally change any posts made by that user. Where you are on much more ropy grounds is either inline quotes and/or where someone is just referred to in a post with or without an @ sign before their name. 

It may be their tools give no basic admin capability to remove all instances of your name and not everyone who runs a forum is competent enough to start running SQL queries over the raw database (considering they also have to do backups etc)