One of the technically challenging requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the right to be forgotten. The purpose of this article is not to go into the details of this requirement, but to show you how the personal data erasure functionality can assist you in satisfying this requirement.
A simple way to think of what it means to be forgotten by software is to consider a scenario where a new portal administrator is hired immediately after a User’s right to be forgotten request has been honored. The new portal administrator has access to all of the Site’s content and administration capabilities. Despite this, the administrator must not be able to glean information that could lead her to knowing the identity of the User whose personal data was erased.
Conceptually, forgetting a User means two things, at a minimum:
- Erasing the User’s identifying information from the system. In Liferay DXP, this entails removing the User from database tables and search indexes.
- Erasing or anonymizing content the User has interacted with so it cannot be tracked to a real person.
Users can already be deactivated and then deleted, so why add new functionality? Deleting removes the User from the table of Users in the database. The User’s information is preserved in other locations, however. In a standard User deletion scenario, all of a User’s personally created content is still assigned to the User and her identifiers (User ID and User Name) still appear in the UI next to content associated with her. This unintentional preservation of user-identifying data is inadequate for satisfying some of the GDPR requirements and is the primary reason why the data erasure functionality was added in Liferay DXP 7.2.
To begin sanitizing a user’s data,
-
Go to Control Panel → Users → Users and Organizations.
-
Click the Actions button for a User (
) and
select Delete Personal Data. If you have not deactivated the user, you
will be asked to do so.The User’s Personal Data Erasure screen appears.
The Personal Data Erasure Screen
You can browse all data the user has posted on the system. Click Personal Site to browse data from that site.
Figure 1: From here, you can browse all data the user posted on his or her personal Site.
Click Regular Sites to browse any data posted in regular Liferay sites.
Figure 2: Choose Regular Sites to browse all data posted by the user on administratively-created Sites.
To review the user’s data, click the item. For example, Pepper seems to have posted a blog entry on her personal Site. Clicking that entry reveals the title of that blog entry.
Figure 3: Pepper's blog entry might need review.
To review any entry, click it. You’re brought to the edit mode of the application (in this case, Blogs), where you can make any changes to the content that are necessary.
To manage (anonymize or delete) all the items for an application at once:
-
Click the Actions button (
) for
the application. -
If you’re sure all items for an application can be safely deleted, choose Delete.
-
If you’re sure simple anonymization is good enough for all of an application’s items, choose Anonymize.
Use the interface to browse through the Sites, applications, and data.
Delete the User
Once all data is reviewed, deleted, edited, and/or anonymized as appropriate, delete the User. A dialog box pops up automatically when you’re finished. This step is simple: Click OK.
Figure 4: To finish the data erasure process, delete the User.
Now the User’s data is anonymized or deleted, and the User is also deleted.