GDPR compliance & removing customer details from database

[Nikki_]

Hi,

I've had a request to delete someone's information from my database after they had previously signed up for email marketing/newsletter.

I went to the "fullfil buyer request" option on my dashboard, chose the option to delete and chose the correct person. At this point it showed a red warning that this person would be completely removed from the system....I pressed delete and received a green "done" message.

Without going into all the details this person is known to me personally and will be very happy if I do something wrong so that they  have an excuse to cause trouble. This being the case, I looked in the customer directory to double check they were gone before I reply to their email with confirmation that it is done, only to discover they are still there.

I logged out and then in again and he is still showing in the directory so I went back to the GDPR section and went through the fullfil buyer request sequence again and he is still there too. Except that now if I click delete it comes up with an error. So now I don't know if his information was deleted or not, but either way it is still visible.

I appreciate that it might have been successfully deleted and there is just a glitch in the system causing him to still be visible, but because of the circumstances surrounding this I can't tell him that it's been done until I know that it IS done.😐

Has anyone had this issue or knows how I can sort it out so that I can prove I've followed good GDPR practice.

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

Hey @Nikki_, thanks for bringing this to our attention! I want to make sure that this is looked into thoroughly. Given that this involved sensitive information, at your earliest convenience, please send us an email here with a bit more details. Our GDPR specialist will be able to look into this further. 

[Nikki_]

Thank you for responding so quickly @tranguyen . I just logged in again to check before I emailed you and this person does seem to have gone now from both areas so I was probably just panicking needlessly. I will hazard a guess that the system updates at intervals rather than immediately. 

Normally I would have waited a while before worrying, but without giving his details away......this is someone that I've previously had to block from my personal & business pages on social media and had to issue a take down notice to for using my copyrighted art without permission. Since I launched my website 11 days ago, I've had 11 emails from him to my business which I've tried to ignore. Yesterday I'd finally had enough and emailed him back to remind him that I will happily seek legal advice if he doesn't leave me alone. After sending me a very abusive response to that he then followed up, around 2am with a quite formally worded request to remove his information and send 'immediate confirmation of your compliance'. Understandably I think given the circumstances, I didn't want to tell him it was deleted while it was still visible on my system.

Anyway, it does seem to have fixed itself so if the situation ever occurs again I'll wait a couple of hours before I raise it as an issue. Thank you 🙂