Quote:For the rest the idea of a deletion function should be there there are plenty of reasons to be thought of why a user could in a case want to delete their account.
Part of my issue with this is that a stolen account can get deleted by the account thief.
Quote:The problem lies at the fact every country has its own rules.
You should only have to follow the law of the country you reside in.
Quote:. I mean if you lose a member that is not active anymore anyways the only thing a site gains from that person is a silly + 1 on the member count.
And what if that member has hundreds of valuable posts that are well-indexed and attract search engine results? You still think you're only lose that +1 member count?
Quote:I don't see a user wanting to leave my site as hostile. It's petty to see it that way.
I wouldn't say it's hostile. When members tell me they want their accounts deleted I just tell them to log out and not return then say "good-bye".
Quote:I am not stopping anyone from going and purging their own data and then once they change their email address the account is no longer associated with them.
Exactly. Very easy to alter your data to junk info and move on. I've done it plenty of times.
Quote:My TOS gives me perpetual royalty free yadda yadda permission to use and retain the content you post. Not stopping you from cleaning up your own mess though.
Agreed. It's not my responsibility to be anyones clean up boy.
Quote:It would definitely disrupt a lot of conversations on my site if a user were to delete their posts. But they can already do this by either deleting the post or editing its contents.
Yes but a single click account delete would be tempting for users and an action that's likely undoable. An action that afterwards they may regret too. We all have lots of impetuous teens on our sites that make rash decisions. Deleting an account is just not a power I would ever give members even if it was an option.
Quote:Legally you can put whatever you want in your TOS, I guess, and I'm not challenging your legal right to do so – I'm asking if it's ethical.
I don't think it's unethical. It's a bit of a moral gray area imho. It's debatable and it's dependent on circumstances.
Quote:Lolwut? Selling data without users' consent is a huge part of the internet. It's the foundation on how a lot of ad networks operate. Sometimes it's not exactly in a direct fashion, but it's still the same thing nonetheless.
True dat.
(2012-12-29, 10:34 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:For the rest the idea of a deletion function should be there there are plenty of reasons to be thought of why a user could in a case want to delete their account.
Part of my issue with this is that a stolen account can get deleted by the account thief.
My plugin mentioned earlier lets you restore accounts from the ACP.
(2012-12-29, 10:34 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:For the rest the idea of a deletion function should be there there are plenty of reasons to be thought of why a user could in a case want to delete their account.
Part of my issue with this is that a stolen account can get deleted by the account thief.
What i would suggest is that the deletion system does not fully delete an account and instead changes all the post to be from a blank poster and changes all the content of the posts to be a general message. The only problem left are the quotes then. Which sadly in MyBB have no easy solution.
These posts are still viewable though by the admin and this way accounts can be restored without much problems. They just appear as generic messages to all other users.
Quote:Quote:The problem lies at the fact every country has its own rules.
You should only have to follow the law of the country you reside in.
True but mybb currently does not offer options for it at all which is a problem.
Quote:Quote:. I mean if you lose a member that is not active anymore anyways the only thing a site gains from that person is a silly + 1 on the member count.
And what if that member has hundreds of valuable posts that are well-indexed and attract search engine results? You still think you're only lose that +1 member count?
The problem for me lies in the fact who is more valuable.
A user or the SEO ranking. I guess i simply view this different but i never put a site above a user from the site but that might just be me. If a user would have a good reason for which the person would want all his/her posts to be deleted and any trace from his/her to be deleted i cant think of any reason not to try my best to assist the member in achieving that.
Quote:The problem for me lies in the fact who is more valuable.
A user or the SEO ranking. I guess i simply view this different but i never put a site above a user from the site but that might just be me. If a user would have a good reason for which the person would want all his/her posts to be deleted and any trace from his/her to be deleted i cant think of any reason not to try my best to assist the member in achieving that.
Every forum/website has T&C. Its up to the user to read those T&C, if they don't its their own fault. Simply state in your T&C that all posts are property of the website and will not be deleted under any circumstances. After all they click "Agree" when registering and they're supposed to read those T&C no matter how boring they might be.
(2012-12-29, 11:03 PM)Paul H. Wrote: [ -> ] (2012-12-29, 10:34 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:For the rest the idea of a deletion function should be there there are plenty of reasons to be thought of why a user could in a case want to delete their account.
Part of my issue with this is that a stolen account can get deleted by the account thief.
My plugin mentioned earlier lets you restore accounts from the ACP.
That would mean the information is still in the database though and still being sold (the original topic).
(2012-12-29, 11:11 PM)Alex Smith Wrote: [ -> ] (2012-12-29, 11:03 PM)Paul H. Wrote: [ -> ] (2012-12-29, 10:34 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:For the rest the idea of a deletion function should be there there are plenty of reasons to be thought of why a user could in a case want to delete their account.
Part of my issue with this is that a stolen account can get deleted by the account thief.
My plugin mentioned earlier lets you restore accounts from the ACP.
That would mean the information is still in the database though and still being sold (the original topic).
You have a good point with this i completely overlooked that with my post. But with selling your forum with the current registration agreement breaks the agreement. And then you simply as admin lose the rights to keep a user and the users posts/thread. Its as simple as that if people change it fine, but half the people who sell their sites do not do this. Also changing the TOS which is also not included in the default one means every single user has to be asked to re-agree with the new TOS. You cannot change that currently without re-asking for consent.
Quote:Every forum/website has T&C. Its up to the user to read those T&C, if they don't its their own fault. Simply state in your T&C that all posts are property of the website and will not be deleted under any circumstances. After all they click "Agree" when registering and they're supposed to read those T&C no matter how boring they might be.
Read the default user agreement.
The only line that is left that might be a saving grace for changing the tos is the highly wonky legal line:
Quote:By continuing with the sign up process you agree to the above rules and any others that the Administrator specifies.
Though if an administrator does not specify the tos is subject to change this one flies out of the window immediately.
(2012-12-29, 02:42 PM)anori Wrote: [ -> ]And for exactly that reason the cookie laws were created to stop that practice for people who did not wish to participate in it.
Only in EU AFAIK, and as long as the US doesn't have it, the many sites hosted in the US won't be affected.
EU laws are generally much more focused on individuals (and what I like), however US laws tend to follow corporate interests more. Which means that this is unlikely to be enacted in the US any time soon.
Just deal with these things yourself.
(2012-12-29, 02:42 PM)anori Wrote: [ -> ]Even funnier is the following lines in the registration agreement:
Quote:Any information you provide on these forums will not be disclosed to any third party without your complete consent, although the staff cannot be held liable for any hacking attempt in which your data is compromised.
This pretty much says to the users that we will never sell their information. Which is funny because most sites don't even bother changing it. Which results in them breaking the agreement with the users when they do violate their own agreement. Which mean users have the rights to at that moment demand their information is removed.
There's plenty of ways to weasel around this, as the sentence isn't particularly descriptive. For example
- what is a "third party"? If I sell my database, to whom I sell it to is no longer a third party but the owner
- what constitutes disclosure? If you make a public post, the information is being made available to third parties. Is this disclosure? If it is, it's clearly against the intentions of the board owner and questionable whether this can be enforced. If I link to an image hosted externally, the external server can pick up certain details of visitors. Is this disclosure? Or does disclosure refer giving out less visible information in a database?
A forum owner can do whatever he likes - get used to it. If they wish to create additional forums, I don't see why s/he needs a user's consent. If the admin wishes to create a bunch of users on the forum, I don't see why s/he needs your consent. If it so happens that these bunch of users and additional forums (+content) are sourced from another forum, I still don't see why your consent is required.
Quote:What i would suggest is that the deletion system does not fully delete an account and instead changes all the post to be from a blank poster and changes all the content of the posts to be a general message.
Oh that's gonna be great for SEO! Why not just send an email to Google asking to be delisted while you're at it?
Quote:A user or the SEO ranking.
SEO ranking without doubt. You'll get no users without ranking and that happens by having good content. If you start to allow users to delete that content you risk your rankings.
I guess we are going off-topic a bit but I feel we're still within the scope of the discussion which is member rights to their account.
Quote: (2012-12-29, 11:48 PM)Yumi Wrote: [ -> ]This pretty much says to the users that we will never sell their information. Which is funny because most sites don't even bother changing it. Which results in them breaking the agreement with the users when they do violate their own agreement. Which mean users have the rights to at that moment demand their information is removed.
There's plenty of ways to weasel around this, as the sentence isn't particularly descriptive. For example
- what is a "third party"? If I sell my database, to whom I sell it to is no longer a third party but the owner
The party buying a datbase is a third party so. There is no way around that anybody who obtains the information from the users who was not the current owner of the information when they signed up is simply a third party.
Quote:- what constitutes disclosure? If you make a public post, the information is being made available to third parties. Is this disclosure? If it is, it's clearly against the intentions of the board owner and questionable whether this can be enforced. If I link to an image hosted externally, the external server can pick up certain details of visitors. Is this disclosure? Or does disclosure refer giving out less visible information in a database?
This could very well be a grey area. The external parties generally would collect information such as IP / view count that type of stuff. And while the IP is very personal i wonder how you would cover that.
On the otherside i do wonder if i am correct in thinking that including such links like images/videos (only links mind) that when clicked the TOS of the image host / video host applies and not the TOS of the site owner.
Though passive data collection indeed could be a problem / grey area.
Quote:SEO ranking without doubt. You'll get no users without ranking and that happens by having good content. If you start to allow users to delete that content you risk your rankings.
I guess we are going off-topic a bit but I feel we're still within the scope of the discussion which is member rights to their account.
On this points lets just say we disagree then. Since i value the user rights above my own. And a stupid SEO ranking vs user rights the choice at least for me is clear.
(2012-12-30, 12:00 AM)anori Wrote: [ -> ]The party buying a datbase is a third party so.
What makes you think that?
(2012-12-30, 12:00 AM)anori Wrote: [ -> ]There is no way around that anybody who obtains the information from the users who was not the current owner of the information when they signed up is simply a third party.
Are you implying that every time the site gets a new owner, users have to agree with all the terms again?
(as far as laws are concerned, you are incorrect - contracts pass onto the new owners of a business and do not automatically nullify unless otherwise specified)