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How to process a Right to be Forgotten request
How to process a Right to be Forgotten request

Under the GDPR, contacts can ask for all the data you store on them to be deleted.

Gareth Burroughes avatar
Written by Gareth Burroughes
Updated over a week ago

Steps to process a Right to be Forgotten request

To delete the data you hold on a contact, follow the below steps for these four areas of the platform (should you hold data on your contact in all of these areas):

Contact data

  1. Go to Audience > Contacts, find the contact you want to remove and select them to access their Single customer view page.

  2. Expand the CONTACT ACTIONS drop-down menu in the top right and select Delete this contact.

  3. Before committing the action by selecting Delete, you're asked to confirm that you understand that:

    • Deleted contacts are removed from all lists they're currently in.

    • Undeleting contacts does not put them back in the lists they were in (they are only added back to the master Contacts list).

    • Deleted contacts are not unsubscribed, and that if they are re-added to your account they may receive campaigns. (If contacts do not want to receive campaigns, you should suppress them instead).

Selecting Delete moves the contact to the recycle bin for 30 days. After 30 days, all of their information held in Contact data fields and Insight data records is permanently removed.

Only account owners or users with the Can manage account permission enabled have access to the recycle bin. To find the recycle bin:

  1. Expand the User menu and select Settings.

  2. Go to General > Recycle bin.

From here you can either permanently remove selected items or empty the entire recycle bin (enabling you to delete contacts before the 30 days are up), and, should you need to, you also have the option to recover (undelete) contacts from the recycle bin. To do this, either expand the MORE ACTIONS drop-down menu and select Recover all, or select the checkboxes for contacts to restore (up to a maximum of 150) and select RECOVER.

Surveys, pages, and forms data

If the contact has submitted a response to any of your forms, you need to follow the below steps to delete this data. You need to repeat the steps for any of your forms that have responses:

  1. Go to Analytics > Reports, expand the MORE REPORTS drop-down menu and select Surveys, pages, and forms.

  2. Select the number in the Form responses column to open the Form report (if there is no number in the column, the form has no responses).

  3. On the Reporting page, select the Responses tab.

  4. In the Search field, type in the contact's name or email address (whatever serves best to identify them based on the data you collected). If no results are returned, then you can move onto the next survey to search for the contact's data.

  5. Select the cross to the far right of any results returned for the contact to delete this data. Select Yes, delete this respondent on the warning that appears asking if you wish to continue.

Surveys and forms data

The Surveys and forms functionality has been retired in favour of our Surveys, pages, and forms tool, however you may still hold data on a contact in a Surveys and forms report, and this needs to be separately deleted to fully comply with their request.

You need to repeat these steps for any of your surveys that have responses:

  1. Go to Analytics > Reports, expand the MORE REPORTS drop-down menu and select Surveys and forms (retired).

  2. Select a survey name to open the report.

  3. On the Reporting page, select the Responses tab.

  4. In the Search field, type in the contact's name or email address (whatever serves best to identify them based on the data you collected). If no results are returned, then you can move onto the next survey to search for the contact's data.

  5. Select the cross to the far right of any results returned for the contact to delete this data. Select Yes, delete this respondent on the warning that appears asking if you wish to continue.

This deletes all of the data held in a single survey for the contact.

Transactional email data

Finally, you may also hold the email address of a contact in the transactional email tool. This also needs to be separately deleted to fully comply with their request.

To do this:

  1. Go to Analytics > Dashboards, expand the MORE DASHBOARDS drop-down menu and select Transactional email.

  2. Search for the contact's email address at the foot of the dashboard. Do this for both SHOW SUCCESSES ONLY and SHOW FAILURES, to make sure you find any record of the email address. If no results are returned for either filter, then there's no data to delete for this contact.

  3. If results are returned, select the check box to select all of the sends and then select Delete.

This deletes all of the data held in this area of the platform for the contact.

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