Akismet should suggest user to check current legal situation regarding data protection

[jottlieb]

The summary may be a bit confusing, so let's go to the facts first:

As we can imagine every country has different laws regarding data protection / data privacy. Especially european countries (and germany above all) have strict data protection laws. Thus the use of Akismet seens to be illegal in Germany (and my other countries) because personal data (IP, name, email and so on) are stored on foreign servers (without notifying the comment author first).

As we should prevent the users from trobule it's necessary to inform them - especially when WordPress is used with language files.

My suggestion is that Akismet checks if WordPress is used in localization and if yes, a notice is shown once. The notice should say something like "please check if the use of Akismet is allowed in your country" and should refer to a special page (in the Codex or on an specific WordPress country sites) where the current legal situation is mentioned.

(Akismet can be used legally in Germany too, if you tell the user first, that some data are stored on foreign servers.)

[westi]

You should raise this with the Akismet developers rather than in core trac.

[jottlieb]

@westi
I've posted this in core trac, because Akismet is developed by the core team and part of every WordPress package. But you this ticket can be moved to the plugins trac, if you think this is useful.

[westi]

Replying to jottlieb:

@westi
I've posted this in core trac, because Akismet is developed by the core team and part of every WordPress package. But you this ticket can be moved to the plugins trac, if you think this is useful.

Akismet is bundled yes but it is not developed by the Core team.

You could try the plugins trac or contacting the Akismet team directly

[jottlieb]

Ticket opened in plugin Trac ​http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1288

[hakre]

Replying to westi:

Replying to jottlieb:

@westi
I've posted this in core trac, because Akismet is developed by the core team and part of every WordPress package. But you this ticket can be moved to the plugins trac, if you think this is useful.

Akismet is bundled yes but it is not developed by the Core team.

So is that a reason pro or contra taking care by the core team? In my eyes you just stated that it get's incorporated into the wordpress package so worpdress.org is the legal entity distributing the program with the functionality in question.

[hakre]

Related: #16778