Account Deletion Policy!

[Peter Walker]

User Account Deletion Policy

We have introduced the following account deletion policy. If you believe your account may have been deleted, please check here first.

As with any forum with thousands of user accounts, there are always those who sign up for an account and then never use it as well as those who change email accounts and do not update it here. As it is important to keep our membership records as clean as possible, we delete accounts causing problems as follows:

Accounts not fully Registered (Pending)

Signing on to the Rife Forum involves registering online and then confirming your email address by clicking on a link in an email sent to you automatically by the forum. This form of confirming email addresses is very common and found on most forum systems.

Unfortunately, many people register for an account, yet then do not confirm their email address. Our system does send out reminders and the user can request the activation email to be resent here.

We delete such unconfirmed accounts after 2 months. The applicant can then resubmit their registration.

Once the email address has been confirmed by the user, it then has to be finally approved by the admin - this usually occurs within 24 hours.

If the application has not been entered properly, such accounts may be deleted instead of being approved. In this case, an email is sent to the applicant stating the account has been deleted.

The reasons for such deletion are usually:

• Registration appears to be from a spammer, etc.
• We always use real names as user names on this forum. Some people initially enter pseudonyms instead of their real names in the user name field. We then try to determine the real name and correct the user name accordingly. If the real name cannot be determined, the account is rejected (deleted). The applicant can then reapply for membership properly.
• If the reasons for membership have not been properly given, this may lead to rejection. We have found that most people who refuse to summarize why they want to join in a few words, are usually some kind of spammer. Each case is assessed individually.

Registered Accounts (Full members)

We regularly check user accounts to determine if they are still active and valid. Once a year, the forum system automatically sends out a message to each user congratulating them on their birthday. As well as expressing our good wishes to our active members, this also allows us to determine when as email account is no longer valid. If our birthday message to the user bounces (is sent back to us because the email cannot be delivered), we then look closely at the reason for the bounce and the user accounts usage. We then either delete the account or place it on "Bouncing Email" status according to the following criteria:

Account Status	No Posts made	Posts made
Account not used since activation	User Account Deleted	n.a.
Account not used for two years	User Account Deleted	User set to "Bouncing Email" status
Account not used since 2006	User Account Deleted	User Account may be Deleted
Poor reasons for membership	User Account Deleted	User Account may be Deleted
Real name given looks faked	User Account Deleted	User Account Deleted

Notes:
Bouncing Email status is a special user group for accounts put on hold until the users come back to the forum (we cannot contact them as their email accounts do not work). When such users login, they are informed that their email accounts are bouncing and they have the chance to enter a new email account. Their user account can then be reinstated.

Deleted user accounts cannot be restored. You can however register for a new user account. It is possible to restore access to any previously made posts. Personal messages (PM) however are lost and cannot be restored.


Summary:

In order to ensure you keep your user account on the Rife Forum, make sure your email account given in your profile is active and working. Please also ensure that any anti-spam system allows our emails to get through.

If your account was working before, but now appears to have been deleted, have you had a birthday since your last visit?

If you did not receive an email from us congratulating you on your birthday, then it is likely our email to you bounced back to us and your account has consequently been deleted.

I hope this explains are account deletion policy properly.