Identity Deletion
Overview
Lytics provides APIs for deleting user profiles and their associated identity data. This is essential for handling privacy requests (such as GDPR right-to-erasure) and managing your data lifecycle.
Profile deletion removes the profile data and its identity graph connections. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.
Single Profile Deletion
To delete a single user profile, identify them by a field name and value:
DELETE /v2/identity/{table}/{field}/{value}Path Parameters
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
table | The table name (typically user) |
field | The identity field name (e.g., email, user_id) |
value | The field value identifying the profile to delete |
Example
# Delete a user by email
DELETE /v2/identity/user/email/[email protected]Bulk Deletion
For processing multiple deletion requests (e.g., batch privacy requests), Lytics supports bulk identity deletion.
POST /v2/identity/deleteSubmit a batch of identities to delete. The operation runs asynchronously and returns a request ID for tracking.
Tracking Deletion Status
Monitor the progress of deletion requests:
GET /v2/identity/delete/statusReturns the status of recent deletion operations, including:
- Request ID
- Number of profiles requested for deletion
- Number of profiles successfully deleted
- Current status (pending, in_progress, completed, failed)
Get Status for a Specific Request
GET /v2/identity/delete/status/{requestId}Returns the status of a specific deletion request.
Important Considerations
- Deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed.
- The live profile is removed from the profile graph database and search index. The deletion is also recorded in a suppression ledger so that the person's historical events are immediately excluded from all subsequent data reads (exports, audience syncs, analytics replays). Physical removal of archived event data runs as a background process bounded by your account's archival data retention limit.
- If new data arrives for the same identity keys after a deletion — whether from a third-party integration or because the person re-engages directly — Lytics will create a new profile. Events from before the deletion timestamp remain suppressed; only events from after the deletion form the new relationship. Consider blocking data collection for the identity if you need to prevent re-creation.
- Deletion removes the profile and all associated identity fragments from the identity graph.
- Deletion operations may not be instantaneous for large profiles with complex identity graphs.
For compliance workflows involving OneTrust or similar consent management platforms, see the OneTrust integration.