Enabling users to remove their account

Enabling users to remove their account

by Pete MacKichan -
Number of replies: 2

Hi,

I have looked around on the forum, but haven't found an answer to this.

Living in Europe, there is a requirement to allow users to delete their account. At the moment the only way this can happen (as far as I know) is for the user to e-mail me to ask that I remove their account. This isn't very user friendly and could be improved. I can understand why we might not want to have a button that enables users to delete their account, especially when grades are held on the system.  What would appeal to me is a button that sends an automatic e-mail request to have their account removed - this could be disabled in settings where it would be inappropriate.

Mind you, from what I can see, when I delete the account it doesn't actually remove it from the database; it merely sets the field 'deleted' to 'true' in the user table. That means that it isn't really deleted, and the data remains in the database. Or am I missing something here?

Has anyone found a good way of allowing users to delete their account? I am suprised that there doesn't seem to be a good way of doing this, but perhaps I have overlooked something obvious.

Best,

Pete

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In reply to Pete MacKichan

Re: Enabling users to remove their account

by Derek Chirnside -

I wondered about this at some stage recently with a public self sign up site.  Another discussion: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=212635 There are tracker items here:

I'm not sure if you are a school that this would be a good idea.  For a different type of use, maybe this functionality is needed.  But Moodle is used all over Europe.  There must be a solution that complys with the law.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Enabling users to remove their account

by Pete MacKichan -

Yes, I had seen the discussion, which shows that this has been a concern since 1.9 at least.

It just seems odd that Moodle doesn't really do much on the privacy front. My understanding of EU data protection legislation is that if a user can subscribe/register on a site then they also need to be able to unsubscribe/unregister.

Obviously in the context of an educational institution where the LMS is an integral part of the teaching/learning experience this does not apply. However, in public sites it does. Even if it wasn't a legal requirement, it would be good practice.

I am also suprised that there is no plugin for EU users who need to comply with EU Cookie legislation.

Pete

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