Consider removing profile information upon deactivation

[turt2live]

There's roughly three major uses of deactivation:

1. I'm done with this service, "delete" my account.
2. I'm an EU citizen and would like to be forgotten.
3. I'm a server admin and this individual doesn't need an account on my server anymore (abuse mitigation).

For cases 2 and 3 we can reasonably expect that the profile for that user should also be deleted/forgotten so that when it is queried down the line it isn't served to people/servers. The first case wouldn't really care I imagine.

[anoadragon453]

@turt2live What do you think about only removing the user's avatar when "erase": true is set in the request?

[turt2live]

Can that include the display name too?

[dklimpel]

Is this still up to date?

[DMRobertson]

Is this still up to date?

The relevant source code starts here which calls this function

The only place we use the erase param is here:

synapse/synapse/handlers/deactivate_account.py

Lines 138 to 147 in eb9ddc8

	# Mark the user as erased, if they asked for that
	if erase_data:
	user = UserID.from_string(user_id)
	# Remove avatar URL from this user
	await self._profile_handler.set_avatar_url(user, requester, "", by_admin)
	# Remove displayname from this user
	await self._profile_handler.set_displayname(user, requester, "", by_admin)
	logger.info("Marking %s as erased", user_id)
	await self.store.mark_user_erased(user_id)

We set the avatar and displayname to the empty string. So both will be forgotten. (But I wonder if the avatar URL image remains in the media store?)

[richvdh]

sounds like this was fixed by #8932

[clokep]

Seems like it was, let's close it?