This all started with a simple request to close my DXO forum account.
Did you know that the support for the DXO forums is different than for DXO the company? Did you know that the “Contact Us” link for the DXO forums is exactly the same as for DXO, the company? Did you know that you can’t close your forum account?
All this was confirmed by the DXO Support folks (not the forum support folks who don’t have “anything to do with DXO support”) this morning.
This is DXO’s Support answer: “We would recommend starting a thread asking for help deleting your forum access. We have provided you with how to contact the forum team, and they will be happy to assist you further once you create a thread.” An exact quote.
I even sent them the “forum support” link and a short screen grab video to show their system is a circular reference that sends you right back to DXO Support (not to be confused with “DXO forum support”). The DXO forum support doesn’t exist until you create a thread?!
I can ‘close’ my forum account with Google and have it listed as spam. That’s simple enough. But it is unbelievable that in 2022 a company like DXO could be this difficult to deal with. Even Adobe does better.
I found some of your post a bit confusing but I wanted to point out that DxO’s staff has a wide presence on this site. At least 8 or 10 or more DxO employees post here, and a number of them post here quite often, some on an almost daily basis.
With regard to the rest of your post, it’s unclear whether your issue is a problem with your software, or just frustration because you believe that this particular site is not as responsive to you as you believe it should be.
I have no idea why you feel your entitled to a refund for your software because of your frustraton with what is a user feedback site, not the official DxO support site, but I have no intention on getting into a discussion about that.
Mark: Agree. A bit convoluted. I was so dumbfounded by how difficult they made it (impossible) to simply close an account that my frustration showed through. (The request for a refund was a separate issue… I have chosen not to use DXO.)
Post edited to reflect your input. Thanks for pointing it out.
You can self delete your account when you have only one or two posts and your account is new. It’s a limitation from the forum software (Discourse) we are using.
It’s true that the DxO Support and the DxO Forum are handled by different teams and that the easiest way to have support for the DxO Forum is to start a thread or to reach directly an admin.
About your initial request, could you confirm that you would like to have your DxO Forum account deleted permanently?
European GDPR prescribes, that the user has e.g. the rights to have a copy of all collected personal info sent to him, to have such info deleted etc. - and data collectors must do so upon request.
For ease of use, it would help if DxO had a dedicated contact for such things. That contact could be an account that is not necessarily bound to one person, but the account should be managed, so that respective requests can be handled in due time.
This page is set up to such ends, but the process is not easily accessible imo. Adding “request info” and “delete info” links (to the page mentioned and the forum account page) could improve that situation greatly.
What will happen to all the content written by that person who wishes to delete the account?
Let’s assume person A added very valuable information/content over the years and then decides to have his/her account deleted. It would be a pity if the content/contributions by that person get deleted too.
Maybe it is possible to keep the content and instead of the name of the person it just it just says “XXXX” or whatever.
I believe you…and there is always a first time, which asks for a few extra considerations, like @Sigi’s.
The posts could remain, if the leaving user accepts it. BUT there could still be some personal info, e.g. in an attachment, in form of names, email addresses etc.
Anonymizing the account name and avatar seem relatively simple, going through the posts and attachments less so.
DxO could ask for permission to keep posts and attachments, but if the user should choose to have things removed, threads could be disrupted, which is not in the interest of the forum.
From a legal point of view, things might get even more involved, if we also consider that someone’s heirs might need to be consulted…
The forum administration allows us to “anonymize” an account so the contributions are kept, and the threads are still consistent. It’s exactly what I did when the user in this thread asked to close his account (and it’s the reason why we are still discussing about it )
It’s also possible to totally remove an account if the user is asking for it but then the contributions will be deleted and it will by a pity for the community (as mentioned by @Sigi).
Anyway, I will get in touch with our legal department and we will update the FAQ accordingly.
Or just update the terms & conditions in the sense that “if you choose to delete your account your account will be anonymized but all your contributions will stay in the forum”
That you don’t want data to be lingering around , waiting to be transferred to another company or waiting to be leaked.
Companies are required to only keep data they actually need. So if you indicate no need or wishes to use something like this forum , they are actually required to remove any personal data that they have from you.
Removing all personal details from the account and renaming it to something randomized (like discourse anonymize function is doing ) is perfectly fine for this .
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