Deleting users

Learn more about how user deletions work within Knock and how deletion can help with data privacy controls.

Knock provides a programmatic user deletion API that you can use to hard delete users and the data associated with users. This can be especially useful in fulfilling GDPR right-to-be-forgotten requests.

🚨
Note: deleting users is a destructive operation and once deleted, the data for that user cannot be recovered.

What data is deleted for a user?

When a user is deleted in Knock, we will hard delete:

  • All system and custom properties set on the user
  • All preferences associated with the user
  • All channel data associated with the user
  • All subscriptions associated with the user
  • All schedules associated with the user
  • All messages sent to that user, including the content of those messages and any debugging events associated
  • All activity associated with a user, including the workflow run logs the user was a recipient of

Note: deletion requests can take up to 10 minutes to process. During this time, you may still see some data associated with the user.

Frequently asked questions

Can I delete users from the Knock dashboard?

No, you must use the API to delete users.

Is Knock GDPR compliant?

Yes, Knock is GDPR compliant.

Can I use the user deletion API to programmatically power GDPR right-to-be-forgotten requests?

Absolutely. You can use our single-user deletion endpoint, or batch up deletion requests per-day using our bulk delete endpoint.

I need to suppress a user from ever receiving notifications again from our platform, is that possible?

Please get in touch with us if you have this requirement.

If I delete a user and then re-use the identifier for that deleted user, what happens?

You can re-add the same user using the previous user's identifier. The new user will not inherit any of the past user's data, given that will have been deleted.

←Setting channel data
Merging users→