But that would be their responsibility. Your responsibility is to delete the posts from Flyertalk.

Laws are laws, no matter what you think about them.

Not quite. Look at Google's losses in the "right to be forgotten" battle in the UK.

"I'm breaking the law because someone else will break the law eventually" is not a valid legal argument.

I assure you that is not my responsibility. Internet Brands personnel, perhaps. And I’m not sure how some laws may ultimately be interpreted judicially. I.e. can a law passed unilaterally by one nation or group of nations be imposed on entities based in non-participating nations?

1. Obviously I'm speaking in the collective. "You" as in IB.
2. You have the right to not do business in the EU, if you don't wish to follow their laws.

If you have concerns about IB's compliance of GDPR, please write in to the "Contact Us" form, which was kindly posted above. And until more cases are ruled upon now that GDPR is in effect, I think it's difficult to make blanket assumptions. But then again, I'm not an expert on US law, let alone EU/international.

I assume that it's not your intent to squelch debate on this in a public forum?

I won’t pretend to speak for IBJoel, but I think IBJoel may be saying Technical Support doesn’t much become involved with overall administrative and legal issues. Your concerns may best be addressed by others, and using the “Contact Us” form allows you to communicate your concerns to the appropriate party e it’s forwarded to them.

Correct as usual, Jdiver. IBjoel and I are not attorneys. The attorneys responsible for how FT handles GDPR have told us how to handle things, and we have passed along those rules. If you wish to have a legal tussle, please contact [email protected]. We cannot and will not contradict or interpret their guidance here.

From a purely technical standpoint, is it difficult to delete all information about a person, including their posts?

No. To do so without repercussions is, however. It's the old "bazooka versus scalpel" conundrum.

It is my prediction that GDPR will be the death of the European version of "privacy." And it will be partly because EVERYONE (including the GDPR enforcement bodies) will be shown to be in violation of GDPR. I can't say when it will happen, because it is not my area of practice. But I suspect that some lawyer like me will be retained by a client to defend a GDPR violation. And they will gather evidence to show that every minute of every day, because of the complexity of networks and data interchange, the "personal" information of EU individuals is available virtually anywhere in the world. And the concept of "forget me" is virtually impossible because there are thousands of backup tapes, replicated sites, redundant facilities, etc.

I saw a lot of text there, but nothing that represented a valid legal defense.

There's a very simple way to get any company to comply: pull the plug on their computers. It's the responsibility of the offending companies to develop a more elegant solution.

My argument, while from the perspective of a lawyer, was not meant as a legal brief. But your answer was actually perfect. Because one legal term (which is a legal defense, at least in some circumstances) is "impossibility." And the idea that the solution to GDPR compliance is "pull the plug on their computers" is so ludicrous that it would be a concession to "impossibility." That is why I say it will be the death of the concept. And, as stupid as "unplug" would be, it still would not accomplish "forget me." NOTE: At a technical level, there is no such thing as "unplug your computer" because "your" computer is replicated so many times in "other people's computer" that it wouldn't even solve the problem.