Privacy requests: giving a person their data and erasing it
On this page
When a contact or a newsletter reader asks what your account holds about them, or asks you to delete it, Settings › Privacy requests finds the person, prepares a report you can send them, and erases their data after showing what will go and what the law makes you keep.
When to use it
Use it when a person asks you:
- what you hold about them — they get a Report, or
- to delete what you hold about them — an Erasure.
You answer the request; WrkLst only does the finding, collecting and deleting. The page is for requests from your own contacts and readers. Every request is recorded in a register.
You need the Privacy requests right, which you give to a role under Settings › Users, roles and permissions; administrators have it. See Users, roles and permissions.
Finding the person
Open Settings › Privacy requests. You can also start from a contact's ⋯ menu or from a newsletter subscriber, with Privacy request…; the page then opens with the person filled in.
- Enter the Email address and, optionally, a Name — the name also finds contacts without that address.
- Choose Find.
What was found lists the contacts that hold the address, including contacts in the bin, and the newsletter subscription of that address, even when the person is not a contact. It also shows what is held under the address alone — for example enquiries, mails, replies to invitations, shop orders — and says if the address was handled before.
Nothing is prepared or erased by searching. You decide who belongs to the person: tick only the records of the person who asked, and confirm that the address is theirs (… belongs to the person). Use Search the contacts found to narrow a long list. Confidential contacts can only be included by a team member who may reveal them.
Set the Date of the request — when the person asked. You have one month to answer. And choose the Language of the report.
The report
Choose Prepare report. It is ready in a moment and appears in your Downloads for four hours; download it before then.
The report is a ZIP file with a PDF, a data file and a table for each kind of data. For every kind of data it says what is held, for what purpose, where it came from, who received it, since when, and the consents on record. Kinds with nothing in them say so. For data you must keep, it says why.
The report does not contain other people's data, the text of mails or copies outside WrkLst, and it says so.
WrkLst does not send the report. Download it and send it to the person yourself.
Erasing a person's data
Choose Erase…. Erase this person's data first shows a preview in three parts:
- Will be deleted for good — for example contact details, the contact log, lists, waitlists, mails, replies to invitations, leads, history, and the newsletter subscription with its consents and clicks. A contact that nothing requires you to keep is deleted at once, not left in the bin.
- Will stay without the person — offers and reservations that were never invoiced stay for your business; the person is taken out of them.
- Kept, because the law requires it — with the reason:
- Purchases, invoices and payments, completed sales and shop orders: commercial and tax law, 8 to 10 years in Germany.
- Consignments and shipments: agreements and their correspondence, 6 years in Germany.
- Works, exhibitions and biographies naming them — the person as artist, owner, previous owner or lender: the history of a work (provenance) is part of your business records, including anti-money-laundering checks, 5 years.
- Tax details, such as VAT-ID checks and exemption certificates: tax law requires them.
A contact that a kept record names stays as a restricted contact: marked "Don't reach out", with only the name, company and postal address the kept records need. Email addresses, phone numbers, links, notes and the like are gone.
The address itself is not kept either. A fingerprint of it stays, so the person is neither mailed nor added again by an import — if you save a contact with that address again, it is marked "Don't reach out".
To erase, type the address when asked (Type … to confirm; for a contact without an address, the name) and choose Erase permanently. This cannot be undone. The erasure runs in the background; its result appears in the register.
Left for you to do
After an erasure, the register lists what WrkLst cannot reach (Left for you to do):
- mentions of the person in other records — a note on another contact, a sale's notes, a document — which cannot be found automatically: search for the name and remove what you find,
- emails in your own mailboxes outside WrkLst — delete them there, except commercial letters you must keep,
- exports, PDFs and spreadsheets you downloaded or printed earlier,
- the person in your Mailchimp or MailerLite account — WrkLst unsubscribes them there, you delete them; if the service could not be reached, do both yourself,
- the newsletter service's delivery logs, which expire after up to 90 days, and any newsletter service you used before,
- a card in a team member's Google Contacts,
- files WrkLst could not remove yet; it tries again that night.
The register of requests
Register of requests at the foot of the page records each request: Requested, Request (Report or Erasure), Status (Queued, Running, Done or Failed), Handled by, and Details with what was in the report, what was deleted or anonymised, what was kept and why. A request for an address handled before is marked asked before. The register holds no personal data of the people who asked. Export gives it as a spreadsheet file.
This article is not legal advice; the deadline for answering a request, one month under the GDPR, is yours to keep.