Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
It's a forum discussing religious stances and personal practice.
Is it possible to request posts to be removed along with the account registry?
As i understand it, forums in general don't have to delete the content and so i wonder if forums dedicated to religion are treated in the same way.
The GDPR means that people can process and store your data only on a legal basis, and that they have to document their processes and their compliance within the rules.
They can process data
The first bullet point is the easiest for them and for you, until you ask them to delete. Then they have to use another justification. A forum may argue that keeping discussion threads intact outweighs the desire to have them deleted. Here it may matter that data about religious beliefs is one of the specially protected categories. This might shift the balance of interests.
There are no special rules for a forum that deals in religious speech. If a normal forum may retain your posts, then a religious forum may too.
They have to remove all identification of you if you exercise your right to be forgotten, but can do so by anonymizing your posts.
Article 17 paragraph 3 AVG of the GDPR states the public messages of a forum can remain as a necessary exercise of the right of freedom of expression. This means that a forum administrator can prevent the removal of messages. A member can request their user name be changed to a pseudonym if it is not already one. If it is already a pseudonym then forum administrator would not be required to do anything.
