Please permanently delete all my data from your systems, not just the blog.
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Please delete all information related to myself or my email address ((email visible only to moderators and staff)) from your systems. The reason is that I don’t use the service but am sick of having this obsolete identity associated with comments I post on other wordpress blogs. I can’t be bothered to remember this password. I simply want to roll back to before I ever created a wordpress account. I noticed the statement on your FAQ “WordPress accounts cannot be deleted” but I suspect this could form the basis of a data protection complaint in many jurisdictions. Thanks in advance, Adrian May.
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Will you be filing that complaint, then? Because without it, your data will not be deleted.
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I simply want to roll back to before I ever created a wordpress account.
All it took to register a username account was an email address and all it takes to disassociate that email address from your username account follows.
Although username accounts are not deleted, so you cannot be impersonated and have your reputation affected by anyone registering the same username in the future, there are steps you can take that amount to removing all personal information and result in leaving only a throwaway email address behind. http://en.support.wordpress.com/deleting-accounts/
1. You can go to My Account->Edit Profile and remove all data except the account name and an email address. Create a throwaway email address and change the account email to that throwaway address. This only leaves the username behind.
2. To unsubscribe from email sent to you from WordPress.com, go here and click on “Block all subscription emails from WordPress.com”:
http://wordpress.com/#!/following/subsettings/3. To ensure the account is locked up tightly, visit this site, generate a password of 15-20 characters, and change the account password to it:
http://www.thebitmill.com/tools/password.html -
Why assume I have a pocketful of “throwaway” email addresses. If you want to mark the old username as unusable by others, I don’t care either way. But it should no longer be associated with any of my email addresses. I didn’t check every jurisdiction, but the EU passed a directive in January 2012 [COM(2012)10 Article 16] giving people this right except in cases involving criminality, national security etc. I think the phrase “WordPress accounts cannot be deleted” would elicit a pretty clear reaction from the individual national agencies who police this kind of thing, but I think it’s more likely that WordPress decide to align with the law and common sense without me having to lodge any complaint.
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A more positive spin on this whole thing is that WordPress might review the design decision to associate one email address with exactly one WP ID. To me that association should be 1:0-N. If it were, I wouldn’t be wanting to delete the account anyway. I don’t actually mind WP holding my data. I’m just sick of being connected with an ID I never used for anything. It’s clearly a goofy solution to say that I should *create* an email address just to *delete* an ID.
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might review the design decision to associate one email address with exactly one WP ID.
They used to have more than one ID per email and it produced some severe problems (one of the Happiness Engineers explained it a while back – I don’t think he elaborated much on the problems it produced – but enough they went through the pain of changing the policy) so that was why they changed to one ID per email.
For the “throwaway” email just go to one of the free email systems such as Gmail and make some long random address with a new account
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it produced some severe problems
Well if they really found that hard, then it would be acceptable if people could choose whether or not to use the wordpress ID when using their email address to post comments. That’s the core thing that bugged me: my email address means me, but my WP ID is just something I tested a few years ago and never used.
For the “throwaway” email just go to one of the free email systems such as Gmail and make some long random address with a new account
Isn’t that a bit of a cop-out: parasiting off other service providers to work around the lack of a basic use-case like deletion. It’s absurd. I object to that on principle and also insist on the legal principle that I can have data deleted unless it says I’m planning to bomb the airport or something. I can assert this right but it shouldn’t be necessary. Providers like WP should be inventing solutions that the law standardises on later, not reluctantly dragging along behind existing laws.
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I was trying to reach the staff and this is where they sent me. Anyway, I’m sure their staff read this too.
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Why are you arguing with volunteers in the forum?
I suppose you have a point that I may have mistakenly given the impression that I was annoyed at people who told me what the WP policy is. Of course I’m not. I’m grateful if people try to help. I’m just annoyed with the policy. I think there’ll be more progress when the WP staff get into the office.
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Apparently not. And there’s no other way to contact them. Let’s see if the consumer associations can get their attention.
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