Close / Deactivate Account Automatically

[Stormlilly]

Automatic account deactivation should be an option for our communities.

I noticed this topic was started and then closed because Admin was reluctant to see the value of this feature.

Could you imagine Facebook or Instagram not having an option to disable your profile? Or better yet, you need to write to the staff to manually get it done?

It's ridiculous that we have to do it manually.  People care about their privacy - whether you think it is a big deal or not that they close their account, it is important to them and it is an expected right with social media sites these days.

This plugin is great but it's nearly $100 for what should be a basic social media site function.

I also already forked out USD$35 for the same plugin which was then discontinued and rebuilt. 

I am still going to purchase the above again because this is something I desperately need.

Does anyone else find themselves wasting time on manual account removal requests and feel this should be part of the core?

 

Edited March 21, 2018 by Stormlilly

[MADMAN32395]

You mean this?

 

 

[ADKGamers]

Would love to have a core deactivation option, I know there's some out there to allow deletion and then the $95 one which does appear to be a good option it's just not something I can shell out at this time. And your other topic Madman still shows internal review and engineering so not sure if that means coming soon or not = X 

[Colonel_mortis]

Agreed, especially as complying with user requests to delete accounts is required for compliance with the GDPR.

[Lindy]

Account deactivation will be coming very shortly, but this is not to be confused with account deletion. There are no immediate plans for an automated deletion system for various reasons outlined in other topics. It's worth noting that the GDPR provides for lawful bases of collection and processing of information. If money has been exchanged, for example, they cannot demand you delete their account and existence provided you have a purpose for retaining it and in the US, we are obligated to maintain financial and legal records. You must, however, outline a retention policy (ours will be forthcoming.) In terms of content, unless a post or other content item contains personally identifiable information such as a physical address, you do NOT have to delete a member's content - it belongs to the community, not the member (and that should be clear in your policy.) 

So, the impending account deactivation will disable the profile and effectively archive the account. There will be no way to contact the member, even with an admin override (and no such modifications will be allowed in the marketplace) through the software and they will receive no further communication from the site. This will satisfy requests in which the user wants to leave but cannot be forgotten. 

Right to erasure requests for which there's no legal basis for processing (communities where there's no contractual premise) an do require deletion would still need to be processed manually by the admin. Again, there's too much to consider there - hacked accounts, validation, purchase records, etc. for us to comfortably automate without a fairly significant amount of development time, testing and resources and our efforts are better focused on keeping people on your community, not spending weeks developing functionality to allow them to delete themselves with the click of a button.  

We'll have more info on GDPR as it relates to IPS and account deactivation soon. Thanks for your patience. 

[Stormlilly]

A basic format that I've used for years is

If member has 0 content > delete account

If member has content > remove email > change password > move to a "closed account" usergroup

Send notification email once process is complete.

[Joy Rex]

There was a great addon for IPS 3.x that automatically moved inactive members to a restricted group, gave them time to reactivate their account, and if they didn't, it would delete their account after a set period of time. Here's an addon that somewhat emulates that functionality:

 

[AlexJ]

On 4/1/2018 at 1:26 AM, Lindy said:

Account deactivation will be coming very shortly, but this is not to be confused with account deletion. There are no immediate plans for an automated deletion system for various reasons outlined in other topics. It's worth noting that the GDPR provides for lawful bases of collection and processing of information. If money has been exchanged, for example, they cannot demand you delete their account and existence provided you have a purpose for retaining it and in the US, we are obligated to maintain financial and legal records. You must, however, outline a retention policy (ours will be forthcoming.) In terms of content, unless a post or other content item contains personally identifiable information such as a physical address, you do NOT have to delete a member's content - it belongs to the community, not the member (and that should be clear in your policy.) 

So, the impending account deactivation will disable the profile and effectively archive the account. There will be no way to contact the member, even with an admin override (and no such modifications will be allowed in the marketplace) through the software and they will receive no further communication from the site. This will satisfy requests in which the user wants to leave but cannot be forgotten. 

Right to erasure requests for which there's no legal basis for processing (communities where there's no contractual premise) an do require deletion would still need to be processed manually by the admin. Again, there's too much to consider there - hacked accounts, validation, purchase records, etc. for us to comfortably automate without a fairly significant amount of development time, testing and resources and our efforts are better focused on keeping people on your community, not spending weeks developing functionality to allow them to delete themselves with the click of a button.  

We'll have more info on GDPR as it relates to IPS and account deactivation soon. Thanks for your patience. 

Is this one going to be able in IPS 4.4 version, so users can de-activate and activate their account themselves? - Thank you

[AlexJ]

On 4/1/2018 at 1:26 AM, Lindy said:

Account deactivation will be coming very shortly,

Lindy, any approximate time line on that one? Will wee see that feature in 2019? 

[Black Tiger]

So, the impending account deactivation will disable the profile and effectively archive the account. There will be no way to contact the member, even with an admin override (and no such modifications will be allowed in the marketplace) through the software and they will receive no further communication from the site. This will satisfy requests in which the user wants to leave but cannot be forgotten.

That's for the US. For the EU this will not be satisfactory enough. Users (or customers) do have the right to have all their credentials deleted, which is not the same as archived and not visible anymore, because then it's still in some database, still able to get hacked for example.

However GPDR/AVG do not require automatic deletion, so admins still can delete them manually. However, if such "account deactivation" will be implemented like described, it would be good to have it as a choice to disable this function as it will not obide the GPDR for EU based forums, especially not hobby forums.

 

[CoffeeCake]

On 4/1/2018 at 12:26 AM, Lindy said:

Account deactivation will be coming very shortly

I assume that this short period has passed, now two years later, yet I see no mention of it in the guides. Where can we find this option?