What does the “failed” status mean with a personal data erasure request?

Yesterday I received my first GDPR data removal request. So, I entered the requester’s email address on the Tools => Erase Personal Data page. The removal request was listed as “pending confirmation,” which is good.

20 hours later, the request’s status is now “failed.” So I click on retry, and it simply sends another data erasure confirmation email.

So, what exactly does the “failed” status mean? Did the user click on the confirmation link and something went wrong? Or, did the confirmation time out? Is there a way to get more information as to what failed, and how to fix it?

I could try to force remove the data, but I don’t want to do that unless the requester confirmed the action (I do need to verify that the request is genuine).

• This topic was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by Steven Stern (sterndata).