This article is one of a series written by Data Protection Education in collaboration with Litus Digital, a social media management company.  The articles came about from questions asked by Data Protection Education's customers, our own experience of working in education,  as school governors, parents and data protection professionals.  The articles raise questions about how social media can be used as safely as possible in a school environment,  security considerations, the law and protecting children.  It is not possible to cover every aspect of social media, but the articles aim to provide guidance, raise privacy questions and provide some support for safe posting.

The seventh article in this series about data retention of your social media channels, websites and photos.

Data Retention for all posts when managing an organisation’s account(s)/page(s) still applies in the same way as any other personal data you hold if the posts contain any personal data.  For example, photos of data subjects should be regularly reviewed and removed, especially if they are no longer with the organisation.

In the cases of using photos on a website, such as a school website, ensure that all photos/data, including those unpublished are removed in additional to pages and posts.

When removing old posts, it is important to remember that several social media platforms are owned by the same company.  It is also easy to cross post seemlessly – for example, it is possible to set up posting directly from your Facebook page into Instagram – so personal data would need to be removed from both platforms.  Removing posts from one of those platforms does not remove it from the other.

Remember that even if you have removed a post from the social media platform, you may also need to go in and remove the photo from the photos area of the channel/website too.

For further advice about records management: Records Management Best Practices.

Guardians of Privacy: Social Media Articles

Other Articles about Data Retention: