Delete User (to be GDPR conform)
The european unions new general data protection regulation grants user the "right to be forgotten" (Article 17, GDPR). Event though Art. 17. (1) a. grants the exception, that data does not have to be deleted if it is still necessary for the purpose it was collected or processed, it is questionable if this exception is applicable.
I understand the effort to maintain a consistent history of conversations and interactions and therefore not implementing a deletion of users and the work it takes to implement a compromise between guranteeing the data subjects right to be forgotten and consistent conversation history.
Still the issue greatly effects a lot of potential users, especially because a self hosted solution is often considered due to data protection considerations.
Tobias Fellinger
shared this idea
We do have a CLI tool for deleting a user that I think should cover what you’re looking for: https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/command-line-tools.html?highlight=cli#platform-user-delete
Let us know if it looks like that will work, or if there’s anything missing from it!
-
Paul
commented
While we do use the CLI to fully delete users, since we do this in an automated fashion we had to write a RESTful web service which runs on the Mattermost server, that our other software calls from the other servers. That web service calls the CLI to remove the users. Overall it's not very convenient. We would much much prefer to see a Go API call to "deep delete" a user, not just deactivate them. The CLI is okay for small numbers, but when you are dealing in the thousands it really doesn't cut it. FWIW...
-
Yes that should be fixed, thanks for pointing that out!
Pull request here to update: https://github.com/mattermost/docs/pull/1954
-
Tobias Fellinger
commented
Thank you for your reply, this really fixes my issue. Sorry for over-reporting.
Short explanation why I filed the bug: The documentation here: https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment/on-boarding.html
implies, that it is only possible to deactivate Users, is it possible to add a short remark there, how to delete users?