Gentoo Forums

I had a problem with my last post, and have requested a right to be forgotten and respect of GDPR regulations accordingly.

As I regret my last post, and I recind my permissions thereof.

If all my posts are removed, someone answer with an intelligble answer involved standards.
And in come a wealth of moderators and comunity represenatives demanding forms to be filled and bug reports as champions they see them selves as.

https://ibb.co/bFTW34f

And I ended there by being helpful, and dropped out of philosophy studies doing so.
Nothing I did there involved skills in arithemtic and language, and my advices over the last two decades didn't steer anyone in a wrong direction.
And yeah, I licked that sign, I did; long before I was an OpenLab student paid for by Intel.

Dude, English please, it's really difficult to make heads or tails of your posts.

and have requested a right to be forgotten and respect of GDPR regulations accordingly

requested to be forgotten by whom?
I don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR. And it seems to be hosted from USA, which is outside of UESR, so they wouldn't be bound by that anyway. Just don't share sensitive information, it's way more effective than fixing your mistakes with lawfare after the fact.

And in come a wealth of moderators and comunity represenatives demanding forms to be filled and bug reports as champions they see them selves as.

FGO mods and admins are just regular users with a few extra buttons, and they tend to do a pretty good job not overusing those buttons.
It doesn't seem like anyone attempted to punish you with the power of privileges, so don't cry about being mistreated.

Anyway; you can of course ignore any feedback you received so far, but I have an impression that you're rapidly burning through good will of multiple forum members. Keep it up and you'll run out of people willing to reply.

Moved from Portage & Programming to Gentoo Forums Feedback.

zpiro: please describe precisely what you want done. Do you want the contents of your old posts pruned? Are there fields of your account profile you want removed? Do you want your username changed? (We sometimes get that one when someone registers under a recognizable offline name, then later wishes they had picked a pseudonym. Your username does not obviously lead me to a real name.)

You have the ability to edit your old posts yourself if that's what you choose. We discourage users from deleting useful past contributions, but it is not technically prohibited.

szatox wrote:

and have requested a right to be forgotten and respect of GDPR regulations accordingly

requested to be forgotten by whom?
I don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR. And it seems to be hosted from USA, which is outside of UESR, so they wouldn't be bound by that anyway. Just don't share sensitive information, it's way more effective than fixing your mistakes with lawfare after the fact.

The right to be forgotten is a right EU users have (regardless of where the service is hosted) which is described in GDPR (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/), the fact that a service is usable from the EU is enough to make the GDPR apply.
The right to be forgotten basically comes down to "You have to delete everything you know about user/customer ....". In case of a forum like this you can think of the user profile, all forum posts and all personal messages. Never versions of forum software usually have such functions available to the user to they can use this right without needing an admin to do it.

pa4wdh wrote:The right to be forgotten is a right EU users have (regardless of where the service is hosted) which is described in GDPR (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/), the fact that a service is usable from the EU is enough to make the GDPR apply.

I do not think that this is true.

sMueggli wrote:

pa4wdh wrote:The right to be forgotten is a right EU users have (regardless of where the service is hosted) which is described in GDPR (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/), the fact that a service is usable from the EU is enough to make the GDPR apply.

I do not think that this is true.

I think it is defined in § 3 "Territorial scope" of this GDPR
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/

sMueggli wrote:

pa4wdh wrote:The right to be forgotten is a right EU users have (regardless of where the service is hosted) which is described in GDPR (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/), the fact that a service is usable from the EU is enough to make the GDPR apply.

I do not think that this is true.

It is true, that's why some sites block users from EU/EIS, because they don't want to deal with GDPR. But I don't think it is enforceable. Also I don't think the right to be forgotten is part of GDPR, as well it applies only to identifiable individuals and not nicknames et.c. It's very easy to want to be forgotten every time you screw up but this is not how things work in real life.

The best OP can do is edit out what they don't want to be see from their posts and be careful what they say. But now I see complains coming that they can't do that job, it's too hard, they are not qualified et.c. and therefore someone else is obligated to do it.

Best Regards,
Georgi

pietinger wrote: I think it is defined in § 3 "Territorial scope" of this GDPR
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/

I see.
Looks completely unenforceable, but this level of arrogance is nothing new coming from UESR officials.
After all, "snails" are "land fish", "democracy" is "making sure populists don't have their way". "slavery" is "human right", and my personal favorite, a quote from a UE parliament session (parle -> to converse; parliament -> a place for discussions) "we don't want this debate to turn into an exchange of opinions"

Whatever. This particular instance is not a my problem to solve, so I should probably remove myself from this thread as I'm unlikely to contribute anything of value.
Edit: I still don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR though. Accounts are pseudonymous and don't identify any real life human

logrusx wrote:[...] as well it applies only to identifiable individuals and not nicknames [...]

szatox wrote:[...] I still don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR though. Accounts are pseudonymous and don't identify any real life human

Yes ... I would like to highlight this in bold ...

... and although there is no obligation to do so, the forum offers the service to completely anonymize a nickname:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Fo ... l_requests

szatox wrote: Edit: I still don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR though. Accounts are pseudonymous and don't identify any real life human

Under the GDPR the definition of identifiable is quite strict. Pseudonyms are, IP addresses are, email addresses are, and those are all stored on the forums for communication and moderation purposes.

pa4wdh wrote:

szatox wrote: Edit: I still don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR though. Accounts are pseudonymous and don't identify any real life human

Under the GDPR the definition of identifiable is quite strict. Pseudonyms are, IP addresses are, email addresses are, and those are all stored on the forums for communication and moderation purposes.

I'm not an expert but those are inseparable from the technology used. It's like asking your cellular service provider to delete your phone number.

p.s. for emails and phone numbers I'm pretty certain they do not constitute private information as I had a case regarding that recently. They only do so in combination with other information that can identify certain individual. So in this case maybe I should confidently say they do not fall under the data protection directive most commonly known as GDPR. At least do not seem to fall under the category private data over which OP may have claims.

BTW GDPR is mostly about what companies are and are not allowed to do with consumer data. I can say for certain companies are obligated to store the lawfully obtained data inside the jurisdiction. They are forbidden to export it outside. That's why Meta, Alphabet, MS and so on have their data storage regarding EU/EIS residents inside EU.

In this case:
a) the data is already outside
b) it's technological data that would make it impossible for the service to function
c) it is not a commercial organization that stores this data.
d) it is not used for commercial purposes and it's not processed for purposes outside what's required by the technology to function.

To the moderators I would say do nothing. If the user asks for account anonymization mentioned above, ok. If they want, they can edit their own posts. As evident, they are only 20. Isn't that ironic - 20 posts for 20 y.o. account.

p.s. I'd like to be pointed to the location of this definition in GDPR.

Best Regards,
Georgi

Team,

We can Anonimise accounts.
This only fixes the forums. There is no 'right to be forgotten' on the internet.

Google and others do a pretty good job of keeping up with the forums.
Removing content from these services,once tracked down, is a job for the OP.

For the avoidance of doubt, the forums are hosted in Canada.

logrusx wrote: I'm not an expert but those are inseparable from the technology used. It's like asking your cellular service provider to delete your phone number.

That's why it usually end your account/service with the organization where you did your request to be forgotten. I can't ask my ISP to forget me expect to keep using their services. Of course i'm free to open account with then after that.

Any data that can be directly or indirectly related to a natural person is seen as a personal identifier. It doesn't matter if you know who I am in real life, just that the identifier is unique to me.

NeddySeagoon wrote:This only fixes the forums. There is no 'right to be forgotten' on the internet.

Yes there is, in the GDPR, see this link: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/
Of course, the forums only have to fix the forums, but with the same right you can request others to delete the data too.

pa4wdh wrote:

szatox wrote:

and have requested a right to be forgotten and respect of GDPR regulations accordingly

requested to be forgotten by whom?
I don't think FGO collects any data that fall under GDPR. And it seems to be hosted from USA, which is outside of UESR, so they wouldn't be bound by that anyway. Just don't share sensitive information, it's way more effective than fixing your mistakes with lawfare after the fact.

The right to be forgotten is a right EU users have (regardless of where the service is hosted) which is described in GDPR (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/), the fact that a service is usable from the EU is enough to make the GDPR apply.

The GDPR can describe whatever rights it wishes to describe, but the GDPR is only enforceable in locations where EU law applies.

With regard to websites that offer no goods or services catering to the EU member states and possessed of no legal presence in the EU, it is difficult to see how the EU could charge a US or Canadian citizen of an EU crime. Perhaps the EU will submit an extradition request to the US / Canada under international treaty law.

pa4wdh wrote: The right to be forgotten basically comes down to "You have to delete everything you know about user/customer ....". In case of a forum like this you can think of the user profile, all forum posts and all personal messages. Never versions of forum software usually have such functions available to the user to they can use this right without needing an admin to do it.

Regardless of anything else, even an EU-based forum targeting EU citizens doesn't have to do that.

Anonymizing data is sufficient, which in this case means modifying the username to something like anonymous-ae8e727f, updating references to it, and deleting any filled out fields in the user profile including email address, thus also incidentally perma-locking the account.

In particular for technical support sites, this kind of anonymization is extremely preferable to reflexively deleting all posts because it ensures that documentation on problems encountered and solutions reached does not disappear. https://xkcd.com/979/ was most likely a GDPR deletion.

This one person has wasted way too much time combined already.

zpiro,

There s nothing to discuss here and as asturm pointed out, we have already spent too long discussing it. Topic locked.

If you want the forums admin team to actually do something, read the page I linked above and email your request to us.
The address is on that page too.