Privacy and GDPR

A member’s birthday is personal data. The plugin gives members two independent ways to control it, and respects both on every surface.

Per-member opt-out

Every member has a “Hide my birthday everywhere on this site” checkbox on their BuddyPress Settings > General screen. When a member ticks it, they are removed from:

• the widget and the shortcode,
• the activity feed auto-posts,
• BuddyPress notifications,
• birthday greeting emails,
• the admin summary email.

The choice is stored as user meta and enforced through a single central check, so an opted-out member never appears anywhere the plugin renders or messages.

Note: this opt-out is intentionally not removed when the plugin is uninstalled, so a member’s privacy choice survives a plugin removal and reinstall.

Programmatic control

Developers can force the same result without touching stored user meta:

add_filter( 'bb_birthday_user_opted_out', function ( $opted_out, $user_id ) {
    // Return true to hide this member's birthday everywhere.
    return $opted_out;
}, 10, 2 );

This is useful for wiring the opt-out to a site-wide consent store or a privacy plugin.

BuddyPress field visibility

Separately from the opt-out, the plugin honours the visibility level set on the birthday profile field:

• Public: shown to everyone.
• Logged-in members: shown only to logged-in viewers.
• Friends: shown only to the member’s friends (needs the Friends component).
• Only Me: never shown in the widget, shortcode, or notifications.

Because both controls are respected, a private birthday field stays private even if a member has not used the opt-out.