New GDPR-related community account features

[Marjo]

Hey everyone,

If you haven’t heard about GDPR, where have you been for the past 3 months (or longer)! No doubt you’ve received an influx of emails recently from companies telling you about the changes. We’ve made a few changes on the O2 Community to ensure you have easy access to your O2 Community information – such as downloading your post history, clearing your IP address history or closing your O2 Community account.

What is GDPR?
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. Coming into effect on 25th May 2018, this is a new regulation introduced by the European Union which creates a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union.

What does this mean for you in the O2 Community?
We’ve introduced three new functionalities which give our O2 Community members several options to control their personal data. These include close your Community account, Delete the IP addresses you've used to access the O2 Community and extract your content and personal information:

Close your account

You now have the option to close your O2 Community account. This is a permanent closure and will remove all your personal information from the O2 Community, including your user name, password, email address and IP addresses. Any content that you've posted will remain on the O2 Community but will no longer be linked to your user name.
To close your account navigate to My Settings > Personal Profile > Close account. Once you select this option you will be asked to confirm your account closure. This will be a permanent closure and if you wish to use the O2 Community again you must re-register.

 

Delete the IP addresses used to access the O2 Community
Using this option means you can clear the history of IP addresses used to access the O2 Community. To do this go to My Settings > Personal Profile > Personal Information > Delete IP Addresses.

Download your personal information
Lastly, you now have the ability to download a file containing all your personal information held on the O2 Community and all the content you've created in this space. If you wish to access your content or personal information, go to My Settings > Personal Profile > Personal Information and select either My Community content or My Personal Information at the bottom right of the page.

The above options give you more flexibility with managing the data held by the O2 Community. If you have any questions about this or need help with any of the new functionality please let us know.

[MI5]

---

@jonsie wrote:

It's good to see that the close account feature works and that you become 'anonymous'. 

---

Most apt......

[Cleoriff]

---

@jonsie wrote:

It's good to see that the close account feature works and that you become 'anonymous'. 

---

Ah well.... I wont be trying it anytime soon....

[pgn]

Out of interest, @Martin-O2, @ do O2 consider Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram (Social Media) as ways to reach out to subscribers...? 

Should there be a 5th option in that part of the Contact Preferences, under "What's the best way to contact you?" ?

---

[Martin-O2]

@jonsie, @Cleoriff, @MI5 Yes I was pleased to see that it works properly! 

@pgn I'll double check with the team but as far as I'm aware O2 won't contact customers directly via social media. They will respond to queries but it's not a contact method for getting in touch with customers.