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Tell us about your other hobbies & none QL related items here :)
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Dave
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PMs disabled.

Post by Dave »

As an FYI, I have disabled the ability to PM me on here.

The reason for this is a US regulatory requirement that communications be stored for 7 years. As I have limited space here, I am forced to delete messages before 7 years to make room for new ones.

I can always be reached at my email .. dave at sinclairqldotcom.


RWAP
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Post by RWAP »

Surely the onus is on the website owner, not on the user?

Is this the US comeback against the EU's 'right to be forgotten' whereby someone can ask for their details and ALL information about them, including private messages etc to be removed from any website, with a large fine for websites who do not do so?


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Post by RWAP »

I just had a look and it looks as though it only applies to companies (although in US speak, this could include any business). Does that mean that you have to keep the 100s of spam emails you receive every week too?

Of course, if you want to adhere to the GDPR in the EU (with strict controls over data - even backups of customer data should be onto physical media which is locked securely away, and not shared online - eg an automated backup of your PC); then you will have to buy a rather large safe to print off all those emails, pms etc. Of course you would need to do that anyway, because in 7 years time, you will probably have changed your email provider, your PC and mail client, let alone ceased to be a member of various forums you take part in now.....


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Dave
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Post by Dave »

Yeah, it applies to anyone who 'conducts business', who maybe subject of a lawsuit. That means just selling things on eBay, for example. After that experience with that one guy, I am going to be super careful to cross the i's and dot the t's :P

Joking aside, though, I make hardware, and will do much more in the future. It's something they plug into their system, which is potentially 35 years old. If there are problems, I need to get it sorted quickly, and also have a complete record of the communications... By law.

It's not fair to ask the admins at QLForum to store more and more messages forever, but at the same time, I can't be deleting emails from 2014 either. Worse, you don't just have to store them - they have to be retrievable and searchable in a single search tool. I use google's mail hosting for my domain names, and they're compliant.

Also, if QL Forum got hacked or the HD crashed, I'd have a real problem.


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Re: PMs disabled.

Post by RWAP »

Dave wrote: It's not fair to ask the admins at QLForum to store more and more messages forever, but at the same time, I can't be deleting emails from 2014 either. Worse, you don't just have to store them - they have to be retrievable and searchable in a single search tool. I use google's mail hosting for my domain names, and they're compliant.
Just a thought - ok google's mail hosting is ok, but what about all the comments made on your facebook posts, posts on the forums etc. As with so many of these rules, no real thought is ever given to small businesses and how they can cope with this, hardware failures and moving between email providers etc. Let's face it, in 7 years time, who knows whether mail programs will even be able to read today's email.

I would not want to retain 7 years worth of spam emails and certainly don't have 7 years worth of normal business emails under one search tool as I don't see the point in keeping an email written 5 years ago raising a small query by someone who has not contacted me since (or passed away, or even asked for their details to be removed from my databases).

The main problem is how to collate all of that data - I have various email accounts (including my own servers, gmail and hotmail addresses), facebook messenger, Skype (including voice calls), pms and messages on numerous forums etc.... There is no single tool which would be able to collate all of this, and I am not sure I would want to even give one company access to all of that either.

Even worse, under the GDPR (from May this year), all communications with EU citizens must be stored and archived only by companies who comply with the terms of the GDPR legislation - including not sharing across borders (eg backing up to google cloud is a no-no for UK companies) without the customer's consent; and can only be stored with the express consent of the customer, unless required for some business or legal reason. This means that to comply with this, you might have to consider keeping backups on physical media which is then stored under lock and key....


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Re: PMs disabled.

Post by RWAP »

On the positive side, I don't currently restrict the number of messages stored on sellmyretro.com, and they are only deleted from the server if both the sender and the recipient have deleted them. You do of course also receive email notifications of all messages (including the message sent), so that would allow you to archive those.

Questions and answers on individual listings are more difficult - do you need a copy of each of these emailing out to you?


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Re: PMs disabled.

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,

I keep all email correspondence including messages sent as a part of my Raid Server backup. I have emails going back to 1999.

QL Forum messages arrive as an RSS feed into Thunderbird and backed with the Server backup.

QL Forum PMs I download as CSV file and import them into Thunderbird which also saved in a backup.

I see no need to disable anything,


Regards,

Derek
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Dave
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Re: PMs disabled.

Post by Dave »

Yes, but I'm not going to all that effort to solve a problem one time while creating a new one.

As a hobbyist, if you want to buy my stuff that's great - and I'll make you the best quality items I can. What I need is for you to contact me in the one unified way that means I can check a single thing, instead of having to log into lots of sites to check them. I don't want to have QL Forum feeding into my mailbox - that is my idea of a living nightmare, akin to the state of one of the QL FB groups which is utterly unusable because every post gets copied there. Spam.

There should be a universal login for all communications that I can split up with different passwords, but which all comes to a common folder, with filtering by sender, recipient. This should be a service, not something you or I have to set up on an ad hoc basis.


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Re: PMs disabled.

Post by 1024MAK »

Dave, have you stepped away and looked at what you have said from the point of view of a potential customer?

A potential customer may look at what you have done and what you have said and decide that if you are not willing to communicate in the way that they want, they may decide that you are not worth bothering with, or worse, that you are not trustworthy.

Besides, relying on a single communication channel is not the best idea in the world, as if that system fails, your customers will have no way to contact you.

Mark


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Dave
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Re: PMs disabled.

Post by Dave »

Which is why it's a silly law.

I have to have all my communications in a single, searchable system.
I have to retain the communications for seven years.

That rules out Twitter, QL Forum, Facebook, etc, for *business* communications.

People can contact me however they like, and I'll give them my compliant email address. However, QL Forum gives me a particular problem because the number of mails stored is so limited. I was currently deleting PMs from 2013/14, which is illegal, just to make room to receive new emails. By following this law, I wouldn't be able to receive PMs anyway if I didn't delete mails. So really, I'm just being compliant and the status quo is maintained.

How does it look if someone tries to PM me and it just says my mailbox is full? It looks like I don't read or respond to messages.

One final twist: I am going on a three month insane adventure - paddling the entire Mississippi river. I'll be incommunicado for 90 days or so. Mostly, won't even have primitive cell access. I can't ask my wife to check 37 different places - she'll need to check a single mailbox and take action if any is needed. During this period, I'll have no items listed available. This is because I want to give people who buy these things my personal attention.


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