Upcoming changes for GDPR compliance in XF1 and XF2

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is soon upon us. But, what is it? Does it apply to your site? How can XenForo help you with compliance in the key areas of the regulation? This "Have you seen" thread will aim to clear up some of these questions, and give you a preview of what is coming up in XenForo 1.5.20 and XenForo 2.0.6.

What is the GDPR?
The GDPR is a European Union (EU) regulation that has been designed to protect the data and privacy of EU residents. It strengthens and replaces existing data protection acts/directives and becomes enforceable from 25th May 2018. The primary aim is to give control to EU residents over their personal data and unify regulation within the EU.

But I'm not an EU resident...
That may be true, but with over half a billion residents in 28 member states, it's a fairly reasonable expectation that at some point you will have an EU resident register on your forum and they will indeed be protected by this regulation and breaches of the regulation can bring penalties and fines against you, whether you're an EU resident, or not. Even so, data protection and privacy will be important to every one of your members, regardless of their country of origin.

How can we help?
Depending on your interpretation of the guidelines and how you specifically use your member's data, there isn't much more to add to help you comply with these regulations. That said, this would be a pretty boring post without some new things to show you so we will explain some of the new features below and how they help you, as a data controller, to comply with the regulations.


Individual rights

Right to erasure
ICO said:
Under Article 17 of the GDPR individuals have the right to have personal data erased. This is also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’. The right is not absolute and only applies in certain circumstances.
Unfortunately, erasure does not relate to a 1980s pop duo but instead it relates to the inevitability that at some point, one of your members may want to leave your forum and in doing so, may want to have their personal data removed. This is also known as the "right to be forgotten".

Of course XenForo has always allowed you to delete members via the Admin CP, and this approach is still recommended, but this has traditionally left their content attributed to them. You have always been able to workaround this by changing the user's name prior to deleting the user. Although we're not at this stage looking to totally remove the user's content, we are making it easier to anonymise a deleted user's content.

1525459818167.webp


When deleting a user, you will now be given the option to just delete them (as now) or change their name before deleting them. You can choose the pre-defined text (which is the content of the deleted_member phrase in your language, followed by their user_id) or change it manually to whatever name you prefer.


Right to data portability
ICO said:
The right to data portability gives individuals the right to receive personal data they have provided to a controller in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. It also gives them the right to request that a controller transmits this data directly to another controller.
Technically, under certain laws in certain countries, the right for a user to request a copy of any personal information held by a data controller has always been necessary. The main difference now is that the information should be provided to the data subject in a machine readable format.

Starting with the next release, it will be possible for admins to generate an XML file containing a user's personal information, including those entered in custom user fields. The XML file produced can be imported into any other XF1 or XF2 forum running an appropriate version.


Right to be informed
ICO said:
  • You must provide individuals with information including: your purposes for processing their personal data, your retention periods for that personal data, and who it will be shared with. We call this ‘privacy information’.
  • You must provide privacy information to individuals at the time you collect their personal data from them.
  • You must regularly review, and where necessary, update your privacy information. You must bring any new uses of an individual’s personal data to their attention before you start the processing.
XenForo already has functionality to enable you to edit your terms and rules, provides you with tools for you to create a privacy policy (help pages, page nodes) and present that information when they are registering. In the next releases we are somewhat expanding these features.

The first step is to start providing a default privacy policy, via a help page, similar to how we also provide a default terms and rules page. If you already have a privacy policy URL, we will continue to link to this. If you do not, then we will start displaying the new default policy link in the appropriate places. After upgrading, if you do not want or need a privacy policy then you can disable it in options.


Lawful basis for processing

Consent
ICO said:
  • Consent means offering individuals real choice and control. Genuine consent should put individuals in charge, build trust and engagement, and enhance your reputation.
  • Consent requires a positive opt-in. Don’t use pre-ticked boxes or any other method of default consent.
  • Keep evidence of consent – who, when, how, and what you told people.
On a similar subject to the previous "Right to be informed" section, consent must apply to things such as the privacy policy and terms and rules. In XF2 we already seek this consent if you have a privacy policy or terms and rules URL configured. In XF1, however, we only did this if a terms and rules URL was configured. In XF2, there was no checkbox to consent to these, but in XF1 there was.

There are obvious inconsistencies there, so in the next releases we have taken a more consistent approach during registration:

Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 00.35.42.webp


We already make it possible for a user to opt-in to or opt-out of receiving site emails using the "Receive site mailings" option under "Preferences", which can of course be set or un-set by default for new users under Options > User registration. That preference remains, though we have changed its name slightly. We've also added a new admin option (again, under "User registration") to enable you to show that preference on registration:

Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 01.24.52.webp


To enable you to keep evidence of consent, we will log the consent date for acceptance of the terms and rules and privacy policy in the "User change log". We will also log if a user chooses explicitly opt in to receiving emails.

In the current version, user change logs are only kept for a period of 60 days (by default) so we have made changes here to ensure that certain change logs are "protected". These protected entries are never pruned and they are displayed differently in the log (denoted by the left feature border):

Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 01.36.34.webp


In these releases, we are also making it possible to ask users to re-accept terms and rules or privacy policies. Because we provide the ability to use any URL as your terms or privacy policy, and because the default policies are editable by changing phrases or templates, the most explicit approach to triggering re-acceptance is having a specific page for each under Communication > Help in the Admin CP:

Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 02.01.04.webp


Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 02.02.19.webp


Once you click "Save" any users will be prompted to re-accept the respective policy. They will not be able to continue using the site until they do. If you use the default page then the policy will be displayed on the page:

Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 02.09.08.webp



Cookies
ICO said:
The rules on cookies are in regulation 6. The basic rule is that you must:
  • tell people the cookies are there;
  • explain what the cookies are doing and why; and
  • get the person’s consent to store a cookie on their device.
We have, for many years, shown a notice to users on their first visit explaining that cookies will be set. This notice was only shown on the very first page load before it disappeared. This should be fine, in most cases, though we've decided to make some improvements for the next release to make the usage of cookies more clear, and to require the notice to be dismissed:

Screen Shot 2018-05-05 at 02.21.08.webp


Interestingly, this notice doesn't appear as a block notice at the top of the page, and it doesn't appear in the bottom right corner as a floating notice. Instead, we've created an entirely new position called "Fixed". This notice position is actually fixed at the very bottom of the page and full width (similar to the inline mod bar). You can even use this position for any notice you create.

The default help page for cookies has been expanded with more detailed information about what cookies are set, and why.


And that brings us to the end of this GDPR-centric Have you seen thread!

Due to the fairly large number of changes in these releases, we will first be releasing beta versions on Tuesday 8th May which will be available to all customers with an active license, while aiming for a final and stable release on Tuesday 22nd May.

As ever, with Have you seen threads, please post any suggestions in the suggestion forum (one thread per suggestion).
 
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@Chris D Thanks for all the work the XF team have put into the latest beta version and the tools provided, really helpful :)

I do just have one question regarding Cookies and in specific Third Party Cookies (from media embeds) and their consent.
XF has embeds for media by default and this is a really valued feature in my forums niche. Now as soon as a page loads with videos on it like this one on this customer support forum https://xenforo.com/community/threads/youtube-embedding-video-has-stopped-working.119514/ quite a few third party cookies drop from youtube/doubleclick/google.
From what I could gather from ICO guidance on cookies https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1545/cookies_guidance.pdf and various sites discussing this - explicit consent is needed before third party cookies drop on users machine.
The new XF Cookie Policy says 'Other cookies may be set by third party service providers which may provide information such as tracking anonymously which users are visiting the site, or set by content embedded into some pages, such as YouTube or other media service providers.' I am presuming XF feels this is compliant enough from your discussions regarding GDPR and Cookies without the need for explicit consent for out the box XF in regards to media embed cookies?

We use Xenforo with no analytics or advertising so have very few cookies but I have been looking into options like Cookiebot and Cookie Control as a method to comply with GDPR for embeds but to be honest if I don't have to use them I would rather not.
 
There's very few sites that don't set third party cookies, be that through advertising, social media features or indeed media embeds. I'm yet to see any major players actually require explicit consent before they are set.

That said, accepting the terms and rules / privacy policy qualifies as explicit consent, anyway.

The document you linked to is pretty old. The most up to date version I believe is here. With cookies now being covered appropriately in the privacy policy, and a more clear cookie notice, that should be suitable.
 
I didn't read all of this, but the US Government generally does not have issues with sovereign states enforcing their own laws on those in their country. Simply if Facebook puts a data center in the UK and the EU comes out with some regulation than it's Facebook's fault that they put the data center there and they must comply.

In regards to treaties, no such treaty allows a foreign entity to pass regulation. Look at the US War with Iraq. The United Nations considered unlawful because it wasn't UN approved and after all the US is a member the UN. The US came back and said that under US law the president had the power to levy war. My point is anyone acting within American law on American soil cannot be prosecuted for a crime that a foreign government passes.

Here is an interesting comment from the EU in a similar case:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...reme-court-data-protection-case-idUSKBN1E12AO

“Given that the transfer of personal data by Microsoft from the EU to the U.S. would fall under the EU data protection rules, the Commission considered it to be in the interest of the EU to make sure that EU data protection rules on international transfers are correctly understood and taken into account by the U.S. Supreme Court,”

The EU is clearly stating that data held it isn't servers fall under EU jurisdiction. This is important because if the US Supreme Court rules in favor of Microsoft then it would be acknowledging that the host country of the data is where jurisdiction sits. If the US Supreme Court rules in favor of the US Administration then it is saying that EU Privacy laws don't apply to American companies, even if the data is stored in those countries. Personally, I believe the Supreme Court will rule in favor of Microsoft.

Bottom line is the US Government is going to let the EU fine Facebook to death and not get that tax revenue when the money comes back.

edit:
Here is an article from a power American lobby
https://www.heritage.org/government...draw-line-the-eus-data-protection-imperialism

Thank you for intelligently arguing this point. The worst thing about GDPR - worse than the obnoxious regulations - are how the whole world seems to be going around saying "everyone must follow this blah blah blah" type of crap when in fact you're correct, the EU is not the New World Order as much as they'd like to be, and they do not have any jurisdiction over non-member countries unless said non-member country has a specific treaty whereby their own laws require compliance with the EU's GDPR.
 
Can I just remind everyone (again) that this thread should be for discussion of the upcoming releases, and not GDPR in general. There's a GDPR discussion thread in the "Forum management" forum.

Further posts will be moved and if it carries on after that, simply deleted.
 
There's obviously some front end changes, such as the new cookie notice and new default privacy policy but, no, there's no new user features as such. No self deleting accounts and that kind of thing.

Can that cookie notice still be disabled as in current/past releases?
 
There's very few sites that don't set third party cookies, be that through advertising, social media features or indeed media embeds. I'm yet to see any major players actually require explicit consent before they are set.

That said, accepting the terms and rules / privacy policy qualifies as explicit consent, anyway.

The document you linked to is pretty old. The most up to date version I believe is here. With cookies now being covered appropriately in the privacy policy, and a more clear cookie notice, that should be suitable.

Thanks for clearing that up Chris, I appreciate the time taken to reply.
 
Thank you for the continuous support for XF1. I have some custom integrations with another site so it wouldn't be pratical to update to XF2 because of this issue.

Is this going to be offered all users like some security fixes in the past, or will I need to extend the support license?
 
Is it a simple explanation of this beautiful upgrade?
What is its benefit?
What's new?
I did not understand the frankness
 
Feature request for GDPR, one I think folks like myself outside the USA could really use.

Could we have an option to turn on some GDPR features for an initial visit and registration screen only if the environment variable MM_COUNTRY_CODE (mod_maxmind) or GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE (mod_geoip) is set to specific country codes? This would be extremely useful to anyone with either of these GEO modules (or the NGinx equivalents) outside the EU.
 
Feature request for GDPR, one I think folks like myself outside the USA could really use.

Could we have an option to turn on some GDPR features for an initial visit and registration screen only if the environment variable MM_COUNTRY_CODE (mod_maxmind) or GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE (mod_geoip) is set to specific country codes? This would be extremely useful to anyone with either of these GEO modules (or the NGinx equivalents) outside the EU.

I think all of these "features" should be optional irregardless of mod_geoip or mod_maxmind. This is a bit ridiculous. We have been seeing the silly cookie notice popup on EU-based sites for awhile. Newsflash: Everyone on earth knows websites use cookies. To me the need for compliance is well-intentioned but forcing it on every forum seems to be a bit obscene. Lets be real here. You have companies like Facebook allowing 3rd parties to data-mine the crap out of their customers, Google just used its Duplex AI to pretend it was human and set up a bunch of appointments, and call Chinese restaurants, but forum owners are going to have to deal with some onerous update that makes us spam compliance disclaimers from the EU bureaucracy everywhere. Not really interested in this update in its current form.
 
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You have companies like Facebook allowing 3rd parties to data-mine the crap out of their customer
forum owners are going to have to deal with some onerous update that makes us spam compliance disclaimers from the EU bureaucracy everywhere

That’s exactly what this EU bureaucracy is attempting to do - prevent the ability for users private data being exposed without their consent.
 
Yet the same users will post on Facebook where they live who they're married to, number of kids plus birthdays, where they go on
holiday and when, what their hobbies are, you name it.... and we're expected to be their guardians whilst they visit our sites.

If people are worried about what the internet holds use the privacy options of most browsers or don't use it, it's not rocket science
 
That’s exactly what this EU bureaucracy is attempting to do - prevent the ability for users private data being exposed without their consent.

Except facebook moved its data out of the EU, so I wouldn't expect them to stop letting companies in the US data mine data in US data centers.
 
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