Retention Enforcement

DPOKit's retention module automates the lifecycle of personal data — from initial collection through to deletion or anonymisation — and keeps an immutable audit log of every action.

Configuring retention policies

Go to DPOKit → Retention → Policies to define periods per data category:

Data category	Default period	Configurable?
WooCommerce orders	7 years	Yes
Form submissions	2 years	Yes
WordPress user accounts	Until account deleted	Yes
WordPress comments	3 years	Yes
Consent records	3 years	Yes
Audit log	3 years	Yes

Legal hold rules

Legal holds override standard retention periods. Example:

Tax retention hold: retain orders for 7 years regardless of any shorter policy
Litigation hold: retain specified records indefinitely until the hold is lifted

Holds are configured at Retention → Legal Holds and require Administrator capability to create or modify.

Registering a custom retention policy

Plugin authors can register their own data categories and retention periods:

add_filter( 'pv_retention_policies', function( $policies ) {
    $policies['my_plugin_submissions'] = [
        'label'          => 'My Plugin Submissions',
        'default_days'   => 365,       // 1 year
        'min_days'       => 30,
        'max_days'       => 2555,      // 7 years
        'action'         => 'anonymise',  // 'delete' | 'anonymise' | 'flag'
        'query_callback' => 'my_plugin_get_expired_records',
        'action_callback'=> 'my_plugin_anonymise_records',
    ];
    return $policies;
} );
 
/**
 * Return IDs of records older than $before_date.
 *
 * @param  string $before_date ISO 8601 date string.
 * @return int[]
 */
function my_plugin_get_expired_records( string $before_date ): array {
    global $wpdb;
    return $wpdb->get_col(
        $wpdb->prepare(
            "SELECT id FROM {$wpdb->prefix}my_submissions WHERE created_at < %s",
            $before_date
        )
    );
}
 
/**
 * Anonymise a batch of records by ID.
 *
 * @param  int[] $ids
 * @return int   Number of records affected.
 */
function my_plugin_anonymise_records( array $ids ): int {
    global $wpdb;
    $placeholders = implode( ',', array_fill( 0, count( $ids ), '%d' ) );
    return $wpdb->query(
        $wpdb->prepare(
            "UPDATE {$wpdb->prefix}my_submissions
             SET email = 'anonymised@example.com', name = 'Anonymised', ip = ''
             WHERE id IN ({$placeholders})",
            ...$ids
        )
    );
}

Hooking into enforcement events

// Fired after each enforcement batch completes
add_action( 'pv_retention_batch_complete', function( $policy_id, $action, $count ) {
    error_log( "Retention: {$action} {$count} records for policy '{$policy_id}'" );
}, 10, 3 );
 
// Fired when a record is skipped due to a legal hold
add_action( 'pv_retention_legal_hold_applied', function( $policy_id, $record_id, $hold_id ) {
    // Custom notification or logging
}, 10, 3 );

Automated enforcement

DPOKit runs a retention enforcement job via WP-Cron on a configurable schedule (default: daily at 02:00).

For each data category, the job:

Queries records older than the configured retention period
Checks for legal hold overrides
Applies the configured action: delete, anonymise, or flag for manual review
Writes an entry to the immutable audit log

Dry-run mode

Before running enforcement, you can preview what would be affected without making any changes:

Go to Retention → Run Enforcement.
Enable Dry-run mode.
Click Preview — a report shows the record counts and actions that would be taken.

Rate limiting

Large-scale enforcement jobs are chunked to avoid PHP timeouts and database overload. The default chunk size is 500 records per batch, with a configurable delay between batches.

// Adjust batch size and delay for large databases
add_filter( 'pv_retention_batch_size', fn() => 200 );
add_filter( 'pv_retention_batch_delay_ms', fn() => 500 ); // milliseconds between batches

Audit log

Every deletion and anonymisation is recorded in the audit log at Retention → Audit Log:

Field	Description
Timestamp	When the action was taken
Data category	e.g. `woocommerce_orders`
Record count	How many records were affected
Action	`deleted` / `anonymised` / `flagged`
Job ID	Links related log entries for one enforcement run
Hash	SHA-256 of the previous entry — tamper-evident chain

Exporting the audit log

Export the log as CSV or PDF from the Audit Log screen. Reports are timestamped and archived for the configured log retention period (default: 3 years).

WP-CLI

Run retention enforcement from the command line:

# Dry run
wp dpo-kit retention run --dry-run
 
# Live run
wp dpo-kit retention run
 
# Run for a specific data category
wp dpo-kit retention run --category=woocommerce_orders