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Delete people and suppress profile IDs

You can delete people from Customer.io from our UI or API. No matter which method you choose, when you delete a person, you’re deleting all data with them too. There is no way to recover a deleted person’s data!

If you are honoring a person’s request to be forgotten, or simply want to prevent an identifier from being added to your Customer.io workspace in the future, you can suppress that identifier when deleting people.

Types of suppressions

Suppressions can mean a few different things:

• In Customer.io, you can suppress a deleted person’s identifiers so they can’t ever be readded to your workspace (good for GDPR compliance).
• Email service providers (ESP) suppress an email address to help you maintain good deliverability.

Email service providers (ESP) maintain lists of suppressed email addresses when people log a spam complaint or the address experiences a hard-bounce. ESPs won’t send to suppressed email addresses. If you use Customer.io as your ESP, you can view and manage your list in Workspace Settings > Email > Suppression List.

Otherwise, if you use a Custom SMTP server, you must manage your email suppression list through them.

Delete people

You can delete people in bulk or individually in your workspace. Go to the People page to get started.

Delete people in bulk

You can filter for, select and delete individuals from the People page.

Alternatively, if you need to delete all of the people included in your search results (such as those matching a specific segment), click Select all ### people:

When you’re ready, click Delete forever to confirm your action.

Delete a single person

You can delete a single person with the method above or by clicking Delete forever on their individual page:

Once again, confirm that you want to delete them, and you’re good to go!

Delete people via API

See our API Documentation for help deleting people programmatically.

DELETE https://track.customer.io/api/v1/customers/:id

Remember, if you’re still sending data to Customer.io via other means (such as the JavaScript snippet), you can still re-create people you’ve deleted!

How suppressing IDs works

You can “suppress” people you delete. Suppressing a person redacts activity attributed to the person and prevents you from adding a person with the same identifiersThe attributes you use to add, modify, and target people. Each unique identifier value represents an individual person in your workspace. to your workspace in the future. This is typically used for GDPR compliance.

Suppressing a person suppresses all of their identifiers, but consider how you identify people according to your workspace’s settings:

• If your workspace is ID-only, suppressing a person suppresses their ID.
• If your workspace is set to identify people by email or ID and you suppress a person, you cannot add another person with the same ID or email address; both identifiers are suppressed.

If you need to export a list of suppressed IDs AND email addresses, contact Customer.io.

If you delete and suppress a person’s identifiers:

• You cannot reuse the deleted person’s identifiersThe attributes you use to add, modify, and target people. Each unique identifier value represents an individual person in your workspace. until you unsuppress them.
• Any attempt to re-add a person with a suppressed email or ID is ignored or results in an error (CSV imports, API).
• Activity attributed to the deleted and suppressed email or ID (the person) is redacted. Activity Logs show forgotten (anonymous) entries for suppressed identifiers.

If you delete and don’t suppress a person’s identifiers:

• You can reuse a deleted person’s email or ID to create a new person.
• A person you add with the previously-deleted identifier will have no prior data, including their unsubscribe status: the re-added person can trigger previously received campaigns.
• Activity remains attributed to the deleted person’s cio_idAn identifier for a person that is automatically generated by Customer.io and cannot be changed. This identifier provides a complete, unbroken record of a person across changes to their other identifiers (id, email, etc).. If you re-create a person with the same identifier as the person you deleted, the new person does not regain the activity history of the previously-deleted person.

Suppress IDs

After you click Delete forever, you’ll need to confirm your action and decide whether to suppress people’s identifiers.

Suppress IDs via API

You can suppress an identifier to redact activity attributed to it and prevent a person from being added to your workspace with the same identifier again.

If you suppress an identifier, we’ll ignore API calls referencing the identifier in the future. If you attempt to re-add a person using an identifier that you previously suppressed, you’ll receive an error.

Suppressing a person through our API also deletes a person. You don’t need to call both the delete and suppress endpoints.

Use the following call, where the identifier is any of your workspace’s unique identifiers (normally id and email).

POST https://track.customer.io/api/v1/customers/:identifier/suppress

For more information, see our API Documentation.

Unsuppress IDs via API

If you previously suppressed a person’s identifiers, you can unsuppress them so they’re available to use again in your workspace. If you add a person with the unsuppressed ids, we make a new person without any history (messages, journeys, etc.) formerly associated with the ids.

You can only unsuppress deleted ids programmatically, not within your workspace.