To help you comply with GDPR legislation, we’ve updated our deletion features for users and leads.
Important: Deleting leads or users will remove all of their conversations from Intercom.
Here’s how to archive users/leads:
Archiving acts as a soft delete. Users that have been archived are not visible in the UI but if the person returns (by logging in or being manually added), all data will be restored, including all associated conversations.
Archived users are not permanently deleted and are not considered tracked users.
Important:
Before archiving users we recommend exporting their information as a backup restore option.
Note: It's not possible to restore an archived user/lead from within the UI, however there are a few other ways to restore users and leads. This includes:
1: If the user/lead returns to your site/login again
2: Adding the user/lead manually with a CSV import
Once restored, the user or lead's Intercom profile will be restored with all data and conversations details.
The reason it is set up this way is to separate the act of not tracking a user, to deleting them for privacy reasons.
Here’s how to permanently delete users/leads:
Via the UI
If you’d like to permanently remove all data associated with a user/lead so it can’t be retrieved you can do this through the ‘Deleting people data’ tab in your settings.
Enter the user ID or email of the user you want to delete, then select the user. Once you click ‘Permanently delete’, this will remove all of their associated data.
Via REST API
To delete the user via REST API you'll need:
REST API bearer token and
Intercom user ID of the user that you want to permanently delete
If you are deleting a single user, you can use our Delete contact endpoint developer documentation. On this page, you'll need to input your Bearer token and the Intercom User ID in their respective fields:
Important:
If you delete a user/lead by mistake, contact us within 7 days and we can retrieve the information. After 7 days this data will be permanently destroyed.
CSAT ratings and comments from a user will not be deleted.
Historic conversations from archived or deleted contacts will still be included in your reporting.
If you have exported user data, you may also need to delete those files in order to comply with GDPR legislation.
Create new users with the same user ID and/or email as a deleted user
This is only possible after the 7 day grace period, because the deleted users still exist in the database with those user IDs/emails. If you urgently need to create new users with the same user ID/email as those that were deleted in the 7 day grace period you can:
Use our REST API to update the user ID (
externnal_id)/email e.g.User ID = 123->User ID = 123_deleteThen delete the user(s) again.
Now create the user(s) with the desired user ID/email e.g.
User ID = 123.
Learn more about how we comply with GDPR, how to contact us with data queries and how to export your data.
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