Private Deleted Messages from 10 years ago have reappeared

Tow

Yet another GDPR issue. It has been lost in the noise of another thread, but in the last few days long deleted Private Messages have reappeared for users. They were not there when the data was first transferred to the new system. In my case the PMs go back over 10 years in include Personal Information and Account Details etc. sent to Talk To companies. It would appear that the previous Delete option for PM, just marked messages as deleted and hid them from the user. To make matters worse there is no longer a delete option on PMs.

To @Boards.ie: GDPR @Boards.ie: Niamh @Boards.ie: Odhran

I formally request under the 1988 to 2019 Data Protection Acts for all my Private Messages be deleted. Including the copy I sent and the copy received by the recipient.

Note: As many of the PMs were sent to companies who no longer use Talk To, under GDPR they should have been deleted by Boards years ago.

Below is one example:

Tow

Dyr

You'd imagine that this is a top priority for Boards to resolve rather than adding functionality...

You should copy this thread into after hours too. Loads of posters don’t even know how to get to the feedback forum. Plus, the office changed the thread title of the email thread to remove the fact that it was a data breach.

Tork

If they were competent, I'd agree with you. The way this transition has gone, and the manner in which boards has communicated with its users suggests not. It's more like a drunk man lurching all over the place, bottle still in his hand.

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714641#Comment_117714641

Only it's not a bottle, it's his langer and he's pissing over every single one of us users 😉

ohnonotgmail

Tagging @Boards.ie: Niamh @Boards.ie: Odhran

retro:electro

It’s genuinely shocking that this wasn’t picked up on during the testing that was done... 😏🙄

It is actually appalling that nuked PMs have resurfaced and not only that, but users now have the option to add other members to the conversation and view them.

Why wasn’t it made explicitly clear by Boards prior to migration that the PM function was changing? Why can’t users delete their own PMs? Why have decade old PMs resurfaced, some containing personal information and with the added stress of knowing other users can be added to view them. This whole thing is just an unmitigated disaster

Leg End Reject

Below is a copy and paste of my reply in another thread:

Alarmingly one "conversation" I clicked into contains my replies to two different posters on different dates! Their messages aren't there, but I know who both of them are. So maybe their deleted messages are gone, but why the hell are my responses to 2 people mixed together?

What the hell?

Dyr

Probably the best way to resolve this is to contact the various Talk To companies that you've PMed and let them know that your personal information is being held by one of their contractors or former contractors..

GreeBo

Jaysus thats bad.

What else that was supposed to be deleted actually wasn't?

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714753#Comment_117714753

Or post about it in one of the remaining active one.

Fly_away

OP and those others who are exercised by this might be jumping the gun. It's not immediately clear to me that this violates GDPR rules.

Personally i'm not too surprised that deleted PMs don't get permanently wiped. You are naive in the extreme if you believe that just because you hit a delete button, a particular piece of content is purged from the internet forever. To me it's not an issue unless somebody can point out precisely how it contravenes GDPR rules.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714801#Comment_117714801

Data Retention is also a breach

cdeb

You'd have to presume the issue is that the recipient never deleted it from their folder.

I can delete an e-mail from my inbox, but that doesn't mean it gets deleted from your inbox too.

Though that means then that the Talk To reps (Vodafone, etc) have huge amounts of data undeleted in their inboxes, which they really should be cleansing regularly.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714823#Comment_117714823

that inbox data should have been deleted (and I mean deleted not just marked as deleted) when the talk to forum was closed.

cdeb

I agree. But is that now a Boards issue or a Vodafone issue? Boards can't delete PMs (and rightly so)

Certainly it's partly Boards' issue that the PMs have resurfaced. But on the other side, the argument that once you delete a PM, it should be gone entirely, doesn't stack up, for the same reason that deleting an e-mail from your inbox doesn't delete it from the recipients' inbox. I'd argue the Talk To companies are more to blame here if they were holding data for ages, and would have been doing so had not the mess of a Boards migration brought that (apparent) fact to light.

bigmac3

I’ve seen examples of this all over the site. Absolute mess.

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714908#Comment_117714908

Boards are hosting the data on their systems, its their problem.

cdeb

I don't think it's that clear. Would you complain to Outlook if you deleted a work e-mail to me, but I still had it in my inbox?

Or do you expect that by deleting a PM from your inbox, it is deleted from the recipient's inbox too? When you send a PM, you knowingly create a data trail between more than one person.

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714670#Comment_117714670

It's actually not that shocking... they didn't have any end users testing it bar office staff so would be very hard to replicate this issue with 'Test' accounts as opposed to long term users such as yourself or myself...

Stheno

I just checked and messages as far back as 2008 that were deleted are now in my inbox

Purple Mountain

@Boards.ie: Niamh

@Boards.ie: Mark

@Boards.ie: Odhran

Please can we revert to the option to allow us delete our PMs?

Also, not only have ancient long deleted received PMs reappeared in my PM area but also sent PMs too.

I did not have sent PMs stored in my PM area on the old site. That option was unticked. Simply because of storage capability.

Now a lot of these have reappeared going back years!

What's going on?

banie01

Id much rather know why the data users deleted was retained in the 1st place and what authority Boards retained it under?

The reasons it has been restored are secondary.

Retention of data post a user deleting it, in and of itself is an unauthorised retention of personal data and is a breach of GDPR.

These actual breaches, rather than the usual blah, blah GDPR, blah style remarks that many throw around are in my experience, without precedent in an Irish context.

There has been unauthorised retention of data and private messages believed deleted by users. It should never have been available on any backup set in the 1st place.

Yet not only was that deleted data and messaging retained, it was transferred to a 3rd party and restored!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117714823#Comment_117714823

This.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117715041#Comment_117715041

This has already been answered.

If you send an e-mail to someone and then delete it, the other person still has that e-mail.

That's not a GDPR breach on Outlook's part. That's how e-mails work.

Would the companies that have now left the talk to forums made a request to have the PMs containing personal data deleted or did they just pack their bags and feck off?

isn’t there some laws regarding holding data for longer than necessary?

McBain11

I used to regularly delete PMs to ensure my inbox wasn't full (as it could be at times in the old platform). Same as others here, I have PMs reappearing after being deleted over 5 years ago. A lot of PMs reappearing have personal info on them.

I presume account closure wouldn't do anything, besides anonymizing old posts. Those PMs are still out there in the ether somewhere!

I can only imagine the level of personal info that would be involved in the Talk to PMs and especially in the Personal Issues Pms.

An actual website wide purge would the only thing to remedy most of this imo. Something along the lines of a date being given and widely advertised to all, say September 1st, where every PM is cleared and permanently deleted (not still being kept in some data storage system in the backarse of nowhere).

Fresh start for all then, knowing how this forum actually works in future regards PMs/conversations!!

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117715057#Comment_117715057

That you think that is an appropriate answer is worrying.

I delete my email, yes then it's gone from my system and the cache or backup that held it.

The recipient still has their copy and a backup can and should restore only their copy.

Not reissue it to every recipient or revert it to my inbox.

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117715057#Comment_117715057

To point out the **** obvious: PMs are not emails.

cdeb

Oh, it's a ****-up alright.

But the question about on whose authority is Boards holding the data misses the point - the data is being held on the authority of the recipient, who has not deleted the mail.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117715106#Comment_117715106

They're effectively the same thing. The difference between the two is so slight that it doesn't change the point being made.