Opened 4 years ago
Last modified 4 years ago
#53040 new feature request
Prune IP and Email Addresses from Comments After X Days
Reported by: | ispreview | Owned by: | |
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Milestone: | Awaiting Review | Priority: | normal |
Severity: | normal | Version: | 5.7.1 |
Component: | Comments | Keywords: | |
Focuses: | privacy | Cc: |
Description
In order to aid compliance with new data privacy laws (e.g. GDPR in the EU / UK etc.) we would like a new feature, which when enabled would automatically prune the IP and email address details attached (privately) to anonymous comments after X days.
A simple settings field to set the number of days would be all that is required to enable it, while leaving the field blank would be akin to disabling the feature.
I am conscious, from my own website, that retaining such details can be helpful when tackling spammers/bots. But I also tend to find that, after a few months, there is no longer any real benefit to retaining that data and in our legal privacy policy we'd like to reflect a time period for its retention.
The site we have currently has a decade worth of email and IP details associated to past comments and much of that could really do with being removed. Sadly, there is no easy approach for this, without wiping the comment and display names out too. In an ideal world we'd probably set a 365-day (1 year) timer and comments older than that would lose their IP and email details.
Alternatively, a way to partially obfuscate old IP and email address details would be another option. But retaining such data indefinitely is legally something that has become difficult to support.