Hoeloe
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Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogOh it’s incredibly debatable, which is one reason why people don’t tend to bother with it unless there’s a major leak, but I’m trying to cover all my bases in the event something does go wrong.
The interesting thing is that an e-mail is, in some ways, a better identifier of a person than their name, simply because it is guaranteed to be unique to the person, while a name isn’t, though locating someone physically using just an e-mail address may be challenging. It is possible to do so by searching through other user accounts held by that address though.
Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogThat is only sensitive personal data. There are separate rules for that, but the data protection act also applies to non-sensitive personal data which, from that same site you sent:
“personal data” means data which relate to a living individual who can be identified—
(a)from those data, or
(b)from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller,The data protection act applies to any kind of personal data, but has extra restrictions on sensitive personal data.
Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogSensitive data is defined in that law as being any data that can lead to the unique identification of a person. This includes an e-mail address. The fact of the matter is that yes, there ARE a lot of violations, much like copyright. There is not the time or resource to pick up everyone’s personal blogs unless there is a serious violation, which will almost never happen in such small communities.
However, I am intending to use this blog as a business, not as an individual, so I have to abide by the law in order to maintain professional standing.
For now, I am disabling comments on my blog, and will look over the law in more detail and examine exactly what needs to be done when my deadlines are not so tight.
Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogStill problematic. The fields are still there, even if they’re not mandatory, meaning that if someone fills them in, I have to store their data.
Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogWhether it’s stored as an account or not, an e-mail address stored on the server is still user data, even if it’s just stored in the record of the comment. I couldn’t find such an option when I looked last, but I will have a look again and see what I can find.
Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogIt’s not about spam, but as I mentioned, it’s about data protection. If I store user data, even just an e-mail address from a guest comment, I can be liable for up to £500,000 in damages if that data is leaked from my server, and that’s if I pay an upfront declaration fee. By keeping all user information on WordPress’ servers rather than mine, and storing only a user ID and the comments themselves, I absolve myself of this responsibility.
Forum: Everything else WordPress
In reply to: User accounts on custom hosted blogI’m aware of that, but I don’t want it to be. It would be comments only, not blog posts, but fundamentally the principle would be the same for both.