Individual Profile Deletion
30 Aug 2026 » Platform
This is my second post in the series on Deletion in AEP. Today I am going to talk about the two approaches you can take to delete individual profiles: Privacy Service and Data Lifecycle Management. These two methods allow you to surgically delete individual profiles.
Some Context
Before getting into the details of each option, I want to provide some additional context so that you understand what you are actually deleting.
The first and most important concept for this post is the profile fragment. As I have explained multiple times, there is no such thing as a profile in the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). Therefore, there is no way to delete a profile. Instead, you have to request the deletion of the fragments that compose a profile. All fragments have a primary identity, which is what you need to supply in the requests. That being said, from now on, I will refer to profile instead of fragments, as the goal is usually to delete all fragments that compose a profile.
The second comment I want to make is that, even though the two methods presented in this post look very similar, they are not interchangeable. We have had customers who have used the Privacy Service as a method to delete old profiles, but this is not the right approach. I have to admit that I do not know why there are two different methods, when, from the outside, both look the same. My assumption is that the internal processes are different, especially knowing that the Privacy Service carries legal implications.
Finally, the triggers for the two services are very different. With the Privacy Service, it is the end user who starts the request, whereas with the Data Lifecycle Management, it is you who decides when to invoke it.
Privacy Service
Multiple countries around the world have enacted laws to protect the privacy of their citizens. Typical examples are the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We could debate for hours whether these laws are fair, whether they make any sense in today’s world, or whether they are even enforceable. What these laws have in common is that the responsibility lies with the owner of the data, not Adobe. Adobe is only the data processor, working on behalf of our customers, and all we can offer is a mechanism to comply with the law.
The Privacy Service is Adobe’s response to these laws. It is a tool “[…] to automate compliance with data privacy regulations which, when violated, can result in major fines and disrupt data operations for your business”. As explained in the previous section, the Privacy Service should only be invoked when the consequences involve legal penalties. Although we are talking here about deletion, it can also be used to retrieve customer data.
This service offers both an API and a Web UI. Both render the same results. In fact, the UI calls the API behind the scenes.
As you read the documentation of this service, you will notice that it is for all Adobe tools that store customer data; it is not AEP-specific. So, when you invoke this service, you have to select which tools you want the service to access or delete the data from. This is the full list of supported products. In the case of AEP, you will likely want to select profileService, aepDataLake, and identity.
I want to conclude by clarifying that Privacy Service is not an end user interface for your customers to self-serve. You have to develop the interface to capture your customer’s request, log it, and process it. I strongly suggest that you work with your lawyers to guide the implementation of this process. They will tell you how this interface needs to be designed to comply with your local regulations. Typically, the request will come through a form in your own website (we offer a JavaScript library to help with this case), a third-party tool, or a call center, but I am sure that other channels could be included (WhatsApp comes to mind). Then, at some point during the processing of this request, you will invoke the Privacy Service, either manually or programmatically.
Data Lifecycle Management
For all other cases where you need to delete a limited number of individual profiles, you must use the Data Lifecycle Management. Given that AEP’s cost model is based on the number of profiles and the storage used in the Data Lake, it is a best practice to create a batch process where you list profiles that need to be deleted and send them regularly to AEP.
Typical use cases include:
- Customers who have not interacted with your company for more than X months.
- Customers who are in a delinquent state and you should not send them any marketing material.
- Customers who have opted out of all marketing messages.
As with the Privacy Service, the Data Lifecycle Management offers the Data Lifecycle UI workspace and the Data Hygiene API. The name of the UI and the API are not the same because each offers slightly different functionalities. In the context of this post, I am only referring to the profile deletion feature that both support.
There are limits in how many profiles can be requested for deletion per time period. You will notice that these limits depend on whether you have the Privacy and Security Shield add-ons or not. These add-ons are offered mainly for regulated industries, although any Adobe customer can purchase them.
I am sure many of you are asking where the profiles are being deleted from. As with the Privacy Service, you can select the products. However, there is no consistency in the naming, so this API uses values like datalake, identity, profile, and ajo.
In future posts I will explain other functionalities of the Data Lifecycle Management and how to delete profiles if you need to go beyond the monthly limits of the Data Lifecycle Management.
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash