How to delete a part of an archived forum .odt file

support
1

Hello,

My request is really special : I used a forum that use discourse, and included some personals infos (phone number, etc…) in a post.
After several years the message with my personal informations got archived (i guess it’s a function of discourse) in a .odt file.
This file is still in the google result, even if usually clicking on the google result make you download a file rather showing it in a browser.

Anyway, my phone number is on google and i don’t like it.

I contacted the team of the website several times, maybe 4 during several years. They never fixed it although they promess each time and excuse.

In my last email i say i’ll contact the “police” (i live in an european country where we have laws that protect our privacy, and the website is hosted in my country) if nothing is done.

But anyway, maybe it’s a bit smarter to ask here, how to do it.

In their last email they told me they’ll look into it, their problem is that they use discourse so it’s not easy for them to access the file (maybe they are affraid of damaging all, i don’t know).

So doy ou guys have any good ideas how they could either delete completely this .odt archive file or edit it with discourse without damaging anything?

I really want my phone number / email and name out of google results. It’s a safety problem, especially beause i threw the spam email that I use on 50+ forums so all people knowing my email can find my phone number and that’s really annoying.

Thanks,

Have a great day

2

If you open the file in your web browser, it’ll have a url like https://SITENAME/uploads/default/original/3X/9/3/9366a9b417a1d94f0a8482f7835.odt

If they have a standard install, they would then delete

/var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads/default/original/3X/9/3/9366a9b417a1d94f0a8482f7835.odt

3

Nope, Discourse doesn’t have such feature.

They either made a plugin to do that or someone manually copy-pasted your post into an .odt file and uploaded it there.

If they delete all the posts that link to that file, the fille will automatically be removed.

4 Likes
4

Despite we (think we) have suppressed all links in discussion, file still remains
What about links in private messages ?

5

Any posts (public or private) that link to that file will prevent it from being automatically deleted.

6

Thanks.
And so, what kind of control could we have on private messages ?
Is there an other way through Discourse admin interface to delete at hand the incriminated file ?

7

Not sure what you mean.

If you have the #plugin:data-explorer plugin installed, you can come up with a SQL query that will list all the posts that references your upload.

8

I mean that “private messages” should be private and we do not want to deal with their content

For the plugin, we will see if it can be installed. thanks

@David_Chong Est-ce qu’on ne parlerait pas du même fichier :thinking:

9

My post above says how to delete the file.

4 Likes
10

Yes it’s me (c2c?) I took the lead said that I really want my phone number out of google results

12

Yes. The incriminated file has been handly deleted.
For discourse developpers, please note that for complex website than our, where forum is just a part with quite complicated integration on the whole site (SSO, API tuned,…), it should be easier if Discourse administrators, that have no rights (or competence) to deal with the database, could manage directly files hosted through Discourse. It is for us a critical issue, thinking how to manage quickly a file infringing laws and shared through private messages.

1 Like
13

If you have the URL of the file in question, then it is in the uploads directory with the same path. It’s really not that hard. If it is, and it’s critical, then you need to hire someone who can help.

3 Likes