Retention Policy & GDPR/RGPD compliance : prune threads or discussion messages behaviour

chaperonRose commented 3 years ago

Hello

Description:

In administration, retention policy, global policy, when "Do not prune discussion messages" or "Do not prune Threads" options are not selected, the entire discussion or thread is deleted if its older message is target by the global pruning. This is the case even if this discussion or thread contains younger messages that should not be targeted.

In reverse situation (with "Do not prune discussion messages" or "Do not prune Threads" options are selected), discussion or thread remains but contains old messages that should have disappeared.

Steps to reproduce:

Expected behavior:

I dunno if it a bug or a choice but this behaviour doesn't seems intuitive to me. ~I think messages of discussions and threads would better be considered as usual room messages (so that there are individually pruned based on their age) && if :~ ~- "Do not prude X" is not selected : X remains even if empty,~ ~- "Do not prude X" is selected : X is destroyed if empty but conserved as long as it contains messages~

Edit 2022-03-08 : see https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues/19853#issuecomment-1061871665 for expected behaviour.

Actual behavior:

see "description".

Server Setup Information:

Version of Rocket.Chat Server: 3.9.1
Operating System: Linux

Note : #19852 was rejected because of template

chaperonRose commented 3 years ago

Is someone else using retention policy and threads or discussions agree with this ? :)

mr-karan commented 3 years ago

+1

I think it makes sense to have an option where discussion stays, but messages are deleted.

chaperonRose commented 2 years ago

Hello, thanks for the votes ! 😃

Thinking about using threads and discussions, I wonder if we'd not better have a different behaviour for discussions, because :

A thread begins with one message belonging to the parent room (message is "part of the main conversation") Whereas
A discussion is just a link to sort of a new (sub)room. So somehow and sometimes, it makes sense to keep this link in place even if the discussion was emptyied, i.e. to considerate discussions like rooms and let owners decide when to delete it.

To sumarize :

First :

"do not prune X" options must not prevent pruning their messages when messages of main room are targeted, because it can lead to misusage of X and bypass RGPD complyance. So it's about "prune/delete" thread or discussion link and not about deleting their messages.

Then : 1) Messages inside discussions and threads would better be considered as usual room messages, so that there are individually pruned based on their age. 2) "Do not prune discussion messages" may be renamed, for example "Delete empty discussions" and do :

if "Delete empty discussions" is selected : the discussion is destroyed when emptyied by prune of its content, but conserved as long as it contains messages.
if not selected : the discussion link remains even if discussion was emptyied by prune. 3) Remove the option "Do not prune Threads" because in this logic, if the first message was pruned in main room, the remaining link is empty and useless.

What's your thoughts ?

chaperonRose commented 1 year ago

Hello, in 5.3 (and I guess in 5.4), theses options still remains the same. Current behavior leads to eather a messages loss or a fail in GDPR/RGPD compliance. What's your thought about alternative proposed implementation ? :)

ankar84 commented 1 year ago

https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues/19269 related in terms of discussion

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