Delete profile

Shahjahan Jewel Yes, that is one way to do it, but for that, the member/user would have to request to an admin to delete their account. I'm not sure but for our sites to be GDPR compliant, wouldn't it need to have the option available for each user/member the ability to delete their own account when they choose to? I know BuddyPress had this option available and we (admins) could toggle it on or off per our preference inside the settings.

David Fore WordPress has this option built in where user can request to delete their profile. So if you delete the profile from WP users, the whole account and community content data will be deleted.

Shahjahan Jewel Ok, thanks. I wasn't aware of that. So, how do I activate that? and when I do, will that give the members of my FC the "option" to delete their own account in their profile?

David Fore I also wish to give FC users option to delete their own account on their profile 🙏🏻 Doing it manually is such a hassle

Tjaša Peterle Yeah, it can be. I don't want people to leave my Community, so when we were using BuddyPress, I had this option turned off. That way if someone wanted to delete their account, they would have to send me a request to do so, at which time I could inquire of them as to why they wanted to no longer be a part of the Community, and to see if there is anything that we can possibly change or implement that they feel should be or would like to be, so we can keep them as a member, and if they decided nothing would do, then I'd delete their account.

But, I've heard that to be GDPR compliant, this option needs to be available to the member specifically for them to delete their account themselves if they so desire to.

I'm not sure if this is 100% correct for the GDPR compliance or not, just something I think I've read or heard somewhere. So, if anyone knows more specifically, I'm all ears.

David Fore From a GDPR point of view, it’s slightly different from what you’ve heard.

• The GDPR does not say you must have a self-service “delete my account” button.
• What it does require is that members can exercise their right to erasure (Art. 17) and that you facilitate this in an easy way (Art. 12): e.g. via a clear in-app option, form, or email. It has to be as easy to delete… as it was to create.
• For social/community platforms, a self-delete option in the profile is considered best practice (and avoids “dark patterns” where leaving is harder than joining). It also saves you time and money in customer support. And in fines… because not addressing this right on the preceptive time (30 days, with nuances in case of delays), you could possibly get a “good fine”.

One important caveat: even if you let users delete their account, you can’t always delete everything immediately.

If there are legal retention duties (e.g. invoices or transaction records stored in your own database), those need to be kept for the required legal period applicable to the customer, ideally separated/archived and no longer used for normal profiling or marketing.

Hope it helps :)

—

PS.: So it’s not exactly that it’s “fake”. In some cases, as I mentioned, if deleting is significantly harder than creating an account, that could be an issue: and you’d need to justify it. Just handle requests on time and make the process easy :)