Permanent deletion of users

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 17 provides data subjects (i.e. your users) with the right to erasure, also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’. By default, when users are deleted in Award Force, they are "soft deleted", meaning their user account is moved to a kind of "trash can" where it can be retrieved if necessary. 

If one of your users requests permanent deletion or it is a requirement to delete users annually in your region, follow the steps outlined below.

To learn more about the deletion of PII, check out our dedicated guide: Deleting your program's personally identifiable information (PII). 

Permanent deletion of an individual user

1. Go to the Users section
2. Find the user record by searching/filtering and click through to their user record
3. On the first 'Profile' tab, there is a button to Delete this user permanently...
   
4. That takes you to a choice of three deletion options explained below
   
5. To avoid accidental deletion, you need to manually enter in the full name of the user as confirmation of the delete
6. Press the Delete button to finalise

Bulk permanent deletion

1. Go to the Users section
2. Click the checkbox next to the users that need to be permanently deleted
   
   Tip: set the page visibility to 100 users to permanently delete up to 100 users at a time.
3. Open the Action drop-down
4. Select Delete permanently
   
   
5. Select which deletion option applies
   
6. Key in your password
7. Delete

Deletion options

Depending on the stage your season/program is at when you permanently delete a user, there may be entry data and judging data for that user, perhaps even final results. You're obliged to delete the user's personal data, but you may wish to retain the judging data associated with the user, to maintain the integrity of judging results. Furthermore, depending on the terms of your program, the content of the user's entry (other than personal data) may be able to be retained by you. To deal with all these considerations, you have three options for how to treat permanent deletion:

Option 1: wipe user data, keep user's entries, keep judging data

• All the user's personal data is permanently deleted from your account *.
• The user's entries are retained, completely intact, but the reference to the entrant user account is removed.
• All judging data (assignments, scores, comments) related to the entry is retained and still reflected in leaderboards.
• Judging of the user's entry can still continue if necessary.

Option 2: wipe user data, wipe user's entries, keep judging data

• All the user's personal data is permanently deleted from your account *.
• All the content of the user's entries is permanently deleted, but a "shell" of the entry remains, for judging data to relate to. The entries will still show up in Manage entries and on the Leaderboard, etc, but the entry name is replaced with the slug (8-letter code).
• All judging data (assignments, scores, comments) related to the entry is retained and still reflected in leaderboards.
• Judging of the user's entry could still continue if necessary, in theory, but the judges will see nothing of the user's entries.

Option 3: wipe user data, delete user's entries, delete judging data

• All the user's personal data is permanently deleted from your account *.
• All the user's entries are permanently deleted from your account.
• All the judging data related to the user's entries is permanently deleted.
• Results for these entries will disappear from judging views and from leaderboards.