FSDreamTeam forum

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: virtuali on November 06, 2018, 12:17:54 am

Title: GDPR: is your order older than 10 years ? Please read this
Post by: virtuali on November 06, 2018, 12:17:54 am
We just accidentally found one of the latest GDPR-related nonsense, which might affect all your digital download orders:

One of our users contacted us about some orders that were supposedly lost on Esellerate. He had his Order Number, but he lost the full purchase receipt, which contains the Serial Number required to reactivate a product. He contacted us, because he wasn't able to find the purchase receipt starting from the Order Number, so we checked and, sure enough, his Order couldn't be found.

We asked Esellerate about this, and their reply was:

"Unfortunately, due to the GDPR requirements that went in to effect in May, we no longer keep any records past ten years. We regret any inconvenience that this may cause"

As usual with the law, GDPR is worded vaguely and the relevant Article, Num 5, Chapter 1, Paragraph E says:

Quote
Personal data shall be: kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/

I guess that, as long the user would like to have the ability to reinstall, one might argue that no time is "longer than is necessary". It's possible that Esellerate decided to set the cutoff to 10 years, but that's just a choice, not a precise requirement by law. They subsequently replied to us that, while the law doesn't set a specific time limit, it requires that one is set, and the 10 year mark is the policy that Digital River and its subsidiaries have adopted.

Normally, 10 years for a digital download is a VERY long time. Every other developer would probably have re-issued a new PAID software update that you might have bought with a discount, getting a new Order Number, and this usually repeats every 2-3 years, so the issue of orders lapsing after 10 years doesn't normally happen.

But since we allowed users of products purchased 10 years ago to STILL use them in their current simulator, by keeping them updated, we are exceeded a limit that Esellerate probably found adequate for most of the other software developers.

This means, if you want to be sure to be able to reinstall in the future, and your order is approaching 10 years:

Make a backup of your purchase receipt

OR

Make a backup of your Serial Number

It's important to note that, the only thing you really need of your Order is your SERIAL NUMBER. Losing your purchase receipt is not really a problem, as long as you still have your Serial Number.

When you activate your Serial Number, the Addon Manager will make a backup of it, in the form or a .REG file, located in your "home" folder, which is usually located here:

C:\Users\YOURNAME

A backup for JFK V2 will be named FSDreamTeam_JFK V2.REG, for example.

When reinstalling, it would be enough to double-click on a .REG file, to have your Serial Number inserted in the registry, and ready to be activated on the next startup.

Not having your purchase receipt anymore, is not really a problem, if you still have your Serial Number.