Hi all. Hope I can clarify some things here.

Firstly our database contains essentially 2 types of data.
1- Your login details

This is simply the username and password you have set yourself. There’s other bits you may have entered into your profile page but we keep these deliberately limited. You can add a website and a bit of text about yourself. Other than that your account is just a mechanism to be able to get through the ‘door’ to be able to post content on our forum.

2 – The content you publish on our forum

This is obviously the stuff you write and appears on our forum.

There is a distinction to be made between the two.
The former is your own data – email, personal details, password etc.. It’s all editable by the user and you can remove it yourself (apart from the password, which you can edit but not delete).

For the purposes of ‘deleting’ this info you can simply change it to junk data and then just not login anymore. Our system won’t have a record of your previous details after you have changed them.

Now, for the tricky part. The stuff you write on the forum. This is content you have published using our website as the mechanism. Now , as has been explained earlier on this thread we don’t delete your forum history as it will break the flow of the forum – by this we mean that other users looking back at threads with deleted posts will find the threads don;t make sense anymore. It also raises the really awkward problem of what to do if your posts are quoted by other users in their own posts. Do we also delete those posts too?

The quite reasonable and practical response is that no we don’t.

Do you have a right to ask for your own posts to be removed? Well, you can ask but you don;t have a right to have it removed. We will consider removing it as a courtesy in unique circumstances. We have done this. For example where a user has compromised themselves personally and put their lives/relationships/others at risk. We aren’t stubborn enough not to ignore pleas for help. This is still exceptional and don’t go taking that as licence to have your drunken rants removed on sunday morning 🙂

The legal situation is that you have entered into a copyright agreement with us as publishers of your posts. We can be held liable for what you post as we are considered to have given you the tools to say what you want – that makes us legally complicit in your posts as the publisher. In much the same way as a legal case can be brought against a newspaper for the words written by a columnist, even if the newspaper states that the opinions of the columnist are not theirs. They published it. They are responsible.

It’s partly for that reason of liability that we claim certain rights to what you publish on our forum. In using our site you have agreed to these (They are in the t&cs) – remember that tick box when you registered?
Essentially we claim a standard non-exclusive universal right to what you post. This doesn’t mean we can take the credit for your pearls of wisdom, but it does mean we have the right to use what you post as we see fit and within reason. For example, as a magazine publisher we may decide to reproduce your posts in print in the mag. In fact we used to do this every issue in a feature called ‘Webpage roundup’.

The non-universal bit means we can’t stop you from using your posts for your own benefit. So you can go and have them published elsewhere if you like 🙂 You may make a statement that you want to post on other websites for example. As it quite right, we can’t and wouldn’t want to prevent you from doing so.

But for practical and reasonable reasons we have to be able to reserve that right to use what you have posted on our forum. Imagine the state of the forum archive after thousands of users had requested that their posts be removed. It just wouldn’t be workable and the forum would be a much less useful tool. It wouldn’t be good for you or us.

Another way of thinking about it is if the posts you write all end up printed and then published in the mag. You wouldn’t be able to request that all copies of the mag containing your posts be edited of your posts after they have been printed. You should consider posts made on a forum (any forum) as a permanent record, which is why I am a strong advocate of people thinking twice before they post anything online. The internet is real. It IS real life and what you post will be read and recorded for history, even if we did decide to help you out and deleted your posts from our forum.

Hope that explains things more clearly. If anyone has any other questions about the way we deal with your information then please feel free to contact me directly and I’ll do my best to help.

ps. The issue is obviously more complicated for subscribers as we have to jump through lots of financial hoops since we a) need to post things to you and/or take money off you.

This thread was better when it was funny.

* hushed voice *

Plus, I think the OP has gone ready.

* / hushed voice *

Blimey Mark. It would have been a lot easier just to tell him to #### off.

Now you can get back to the DIY.

Harry the Spider + 1

Good advice there from Mark.

Much what Facebook were saying before having to back pedal, Mark. The EU is clear bout giving people the ability to make their pearls of wisdom private. Britain running a common law system that must respect EU law, we’ll have to wait for a test case.

Think you’ve rather misunderstood the system there.. The EU may be clear on social media where content is predominantly a private affair but this is a public forum accessible to read by anyone regardless of whether they have an account or not. What you say in public cannot be unsaid. What is published cannot be unpublished. By their very nature you are posting to the public when you post on a forum. The name ‘forum’ is by definition a public affair. Once in the public domain it is ‘out there’. You can’t call it back in.

If you are expecting a ruling that declares that content posted in a public forum can be undone by the author then it’s not going to happen. It’s certainly not what the EU is proposing. Think of comments posted on BBC/DM/Guardian stories online. Do you think that you will be given the right to demand that what you posted publicly can be removed at your request?
That’s rhetorical. The answer is clearly no.

Jeez is that it?

I’ve been making a spectacular tin foil hat all morning in anticipation of a top quality conspiracy theory.
Are you sure you cant read our thoughts from the login details?

Are you sure you cant read our thoughts from the login details?

No, Singletrack sub-contracts that work out to the NSA.
Only they have the server/processor power to wade through the sheer amount of drivel thoughts that gets posted on here. 😉

I wouldn’t mind, but the (ex) member in question was hardly a “big hitter”. 😉