I'm trying to find out what the legal laws for the internet are on storing text via e-mail/chat. I am not sure if there is such a law but than again it's better to ask than to find out the hard way. Does DaniWeb keep history of Private messages for a certain amount of time? Is there a government or some official webpage that lists the laws on what data you are legally suppose to keep or aren't suppose to keep as a website owner that allows users to have their own accounts?
the_programmer 0 Newbie Poster
darkagn 315 Veteran Poster Featured Poster
Not sure what DaniWeb's policy is, but for other forum-type sites that I have contributed to we kept all PM's, emails, forum posts in database tables. If the owner of the message deleted it (by pressing a button for example) then we archived the message to another database table that was not accessible to the general public. This way we had a record of abusive posts, bullying etc even if the sender tried to delete it.
From a legal standpoint there are only certain things that are illegal to store. Off the top of my head I know that signatures (that is hand-written credit card authorisations) have legal implications for example. But things like emails, forum posts, blogs etc should be ok to store indefinately.
the_programmer 0 Newbie Poster
Not sure what DaniWeb's policy is, but for other forum-type sites that I have contributed to we kept all PM's, emails, forum posts in database tables. If the owner of the message deleted it (by pressing a button for example) then we archived the message to another database table that was not accessible to the general public. This way we had a record of abusive posts, bullying etc even if the sender tried to delete it.
From a legal standpoint there are only certain things that are illegal to store. Off the top of my head I know that signatures (that is hand-written credit card authorisations) have legal implications for example. But things like emails, forum posts, blogs etc should be ok to store indefinately.
thanks for the feedback. I would like a link to any official documentation on what is suppose to be kept and what isn't. Thank you.
peter_budo 2,532 Code tags enforcer Team Colleague Featured Poster
thanks for the feedback. I would like a link to any official documentation on what is suppose to be kept and what isn't. Thank you.
That bit you can do on your own by searching law in regards of IT and data protection of your country that varies between countries
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