Does anyone know who the Data Protection Officer is for Bit-Tech? and what the contact information is. i.e who is responsible for handling the data kept in these forums?
I do not, as I have said over PM, but I can provide this snippet from ICO which I think might be germane to the reasoning behind your query: the ICO guidelines on the right to erasure. Note that "the right is not absolute and only applies in certain circumstances," and that there is a list (see "When does the right to erasure apply") detailing those circumstances. Note also that "I was a member of a forum and now don't want to be" is not one of the circumstances, as when you make posts on social media services like this you grant the company an irrevocable licence to host and reuse said content. Note also that a request for erasure can be denied if, and I quote directly here, "a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive," including if "the request is malicious in intent and is being used to harass an organisation with no real purposes other than to cause disruption." This is, of course, simply my opinion - as I've told you over PM, I'm not the Data Protection Officer, an employee, nor the owner of Bit-Tech. I do know that, as you still have access to the forum, you're free to delete your posts yourself if you so choose.
I'm pretty sure from others that have wanted to, they have had to delete the posts themselves if they want them scrubbed. But nothing is ever really scrubbed on the internet anyway. The most the platform has done previously, even for people who once were mods and/or a contractor for the site, is change your username to a bland generic one to disassociate you from the content.
Yeah, email addresses, usernames, and personally identifiable information usually get changed to something random (in the case of email address) or altered (in the case of username, hence why we have Guest_xxxxx users). The posts, as said above, aren't personally identifiable information so you'd need to delete them yourself. The person you'd need to make those first changes is likely to be @MLyons, though he won't be the DPO I wouldn't imagine.
It is neither legally required, nor - as far as I'm aware - possible. You can do it yourself, but it's a manual process.
or just start re-opening old posts hey Gareth LOL not really sure how to manually del posts, dont seem to have an option tbh
Click on the "Edit" option at the bottom of a post, delete the content (you may need to replace it with something like a full-stop, I can't remember if it complains about completely blank posts), and click Save Changes. Repeat... 2,756 times, apparently.
@Pie_uk: Please do not use the "Report" function on all of your posts, one-by-one. The mod team is not here to do unpaid labour for you. You've already edited the posts you're "reporting" to remove their content, that's plenty. EDIT: Seems you're not listening. For transparency: I've issued a ban, valid to Monday, to stop @Pie_uk from clogging up the report system (and 'cos I have actual work to do that doesn't involve closing each report as rejected.) @Pie_uk, you're free to continue erasing your old posts after the ban expires - but do not abuse the report system while doing so.
As has been posted above. We can't delete content but we can make it so the account can't be linked to a person. Any identifying information held within posts is down to the user to remove prior to us deleting the account and therefore access.
At the risk of highlighting something pie_uk is clearly having issues with, wtf is going on in this thread? You can't escape from wayback machine.
There are posts I am unable to edit nor delete. Please can you delete any that I am not able to? I reported 2 or 3 but didnt want to continue to do so incase you throw your toys out the pram again
...aren't you literally flouncing off because you couldn't follow the rules in the Marketplace? Pot, meet kettle.
Okay, if that's what you want. Have a week's ban, for abuse. Next one's permanent, so I'd maybe rethink how you're approaching all this when you come back. To quote your PM to me: "ego hurt much? LOL ok buddy - stay salty. cheers "
This subject of removing old posts, subject access requests, and removal of personal data has come up a number of times over the years. I think it’s always worth re-stating this in detail whenever it does. AFAIK, this process hasn’t changed since bit-tech ceased active operations, but I’m happy to be corrected on any factual inaccuracies. You already have access to any “personal information” stored in your account, the forum software provides the facility for you to view, edit, or remove this information. The only “personal information” you are even required to submit is an email address and a date of birth. A process does exist to replace usernames with a generic “Guest-XXXXX” username, and - as far as I understand - this also removes the email address associated with the account. This process, as well as changing your date of birth, can be requested via a moderator. The content of a post isn’t inherently classed as “personal data”. You certainly include personal information about yourself in one of your posts, but as this is stored as unstructured data it is not feasible to automatically identify and erase this (and no, ChatGPT can’t do it for you either, don’t even go there). Furthermore, the fact that you would be knowingly posting personal information on a publicly available website is enough to make solicitors/barristers very rich while they argue whether this could even be considered “personal information held by a company about you”. An automated means to remove a user’s past posts would require extensive development and testing. “bit-tech” does not have the means to do this because this forum is run by a piece of commercial software, XenForo. Even if this existed, and didn’t require additional license costs, technical resource would still be required in order test this process before running it on the live site. A simple database operation like “DELETE * FROM * WHERE POSTED_BY = someUserId” would irrevocably corrupt the forum data and break the site. The only realistic way to reliably delete a user’s post history is to audit each and every single one and manually edit them. Every single instance where a post was quoted by another user would also have to be updated. Having someone do this on your behalf at no cost to you is unreasonably burdensome; it is even less justifiable now that the continued operation of this forum is effectively on a “good will” basis. With the possible exception of one person, No one here gets paid by “bit-tech” to run, operate, update, maintain, or moderate this forum. Not even those with “Staff” under their username.
In this situation, it's the same for everybody, anyone wanting all their posts deleted, will have to do it themselves. You are not a special case, you will not get special treatment, get your finger out and get deleting, when you are allowed back...
