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Legal Aspects of Retaining Inactive User Accounts Under European Law
This argument may be of interest of forum and blog owners in the European Community.
By starting the article, I'm following a suggestion by a moderator from vBulletin.org, in order to find out the truth and extent of the currently laws regarding in particular inactive users - users who have registered or have started to register, and never posted or completed registering.
This thread is not of interest for forum owners who do not require users to register, or who are keeping their forums in a closed circuit, such as in a LAN network only.
Chapter 1: My turn
When I started to host more than one forum, and in particular forums of other people, I asked my legal consultant to work through, and tell me which laws exactly apply to an activity such as keeping a forum.
He lined out quite a number of rules, and suggested to maintain those forums under the head of a company and not privately, since in case of legal disputes, I generally would have the best advantages.
Regarding inactive accounts, he told me that accounts which never have become active, or users who never had any other activity than logging in and then forget about the whole subscription, would have to be deleted or deactivated (banned) after at most 180 days of the last activity. He stated, it would probably not apply to accounts which have at least one post.
At the beginning of my activity, I have removed or banned those users manually after 90 days, and have later added a plugin to all of my forums which does exactly that.
When I published this plugin at vbulletin.org, the laws stating these rules were asked, and our private discussion has worked out to be of general interest.
This is part of my statements:
The laws we were talking about are generally designed and published by the European Community, here:
The Italian implementation (PDF in English) can be found here:
The laws are pretty complete in those places, but may require other laws, since there are many cross-references.
Chapter 2: Your turn
By starting the article, I'm following a suggestion by a moderator from vBulletin.org, in order to find out the truth and extent of the currently laws regarding in particular inactive users - users who have registered or have started to register, and never posted or completed registering.
This thread is not of interest for forum owners who do not require users to register, or who are keeping their forums in a closed circuit, such as in a LAN network only.
Chapter 1: My turn
When I started to host more than one forum, and in particular forums of other people, I asked my legal consultant to work through, and tell me which laws exactly apply to an activity such as keeping a forum.
He lined out quite a number of rules, and suggested to maintain those forums under the head of a company and not privately, since in case of legal disputes, I generally would have the best advantages.
Regarding inactive accounts, he told me that accounts which never have become active, or users who never had any other activity than logging in and then forget about the whole subscription, would have to be deleted or deactivated (banned) after at most 180 days of the last activity. He stated, it would probably not apply to accounts which have at least one post.
At the beginning of my activity, I have removed or banned those users manually after 90 days, and have later added a plugin to all of my forums which does exactly that.
When I published this plugin at vbulletin.org, the laws stating these rules were asked, and our private discussion has worked out to be of general interest.
This is part of my statements:
Here is it all. Due to being a company holder, I have to follow the standards more strictly than private fellows, but this is also changing soon. Failing to adhere to the rules may result into severe fines, reaching, as far as I rember, up to €30.000,00 and 5 years of prison. This is the main reason why, since the law became active, european spammers have become so rare. The laws regard "user accounts" and "sensitive data" in general.
In order to publish a forum, we are also forced to show a privacy statement, similar to the one you find on my site. To be exact, it should be in the language of the country in which the site is hosted. Since my site addresses mainly international visitors, my personal "free" license was to publish just one in English.
With ongoing legislation, it is probable that forum owners may be only company owners or members of Journalism Guilds, as well.
In order to publish a forum, we are also forced to show a privacy statement, similar to the one you find on my site. To be exact, it should be in the language of the country in which the site is hosted. Since my site addresses mainly international visitors, my personal "free" license was to publish just one in English.
With ongoing legislation, it is probable that forum owners may be only company owners or members of Journalism Guilds, as well.
The Italian implementation (PDF in English) can be found here:
The laws are pretty complete in those places, but may require other laws, since there are many cross-references.
Chapter 2: Your turn
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