Issue
I need to fulfill a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) erasure request (the "right to be forgotten") for a specific user, and I want written confirmation of the deletion behavior. I tried to call DELETE /api/0/projects/{org}/{project}/users/{id}/ and need to understand the required token scope, the deletion semantics, what a 404 means, and any retention, soft-deletion, or backup-expiry timeline that applies after deletion.
Applies To
All SaaS Customers
Security & Compliance
GDPR / Data Privacy
Data Deletion and Retention
Resolution
First, identify which of the two requests you are making, because Sentry handles them differently.
If you are asking Sentry to erase your own personal data (you are the data subject): Submit the Sentry data privacy request form. Sentry routes this form to its privacy team, which handles erasure, correction, and copy requests and provides written confirmation. Use this same form when you need a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or privacy-team response rather than a support answer. For more detail, see how to exercise your right to be forgotten.
If you are erasing data you collected about your own end-users (you are the data controller): You must complete this erasure yourself. Sentry acts as a data processor for the event data you send, so you retain control of it and are responsible for deleting it. The privacy form does not cover data that customers send to their own Sentry organization. See the process for submitting a deletion request on a client's behalf.
Note the following about the API endpoint referenced in most erasure scripts:
The endpoint
/api/0/projects/{organization}/{project}/users/is read-only. It supportsGETonly ("List a Project's Users") and returns users that Sentry observed in event tags, not deletable account records. AGETrequires a token withproject:admin,project:read, orproject:write.There is no
DELETE /api/0/projects/{org}/{project}/users/{id}/endpoint. A request to that path does not erase a user or any associated data, so a404or a "completed" task from an erasure worker calling it confirms nothing about deletion. See the List a Project's Users reference.
To actually erase an end-user's data, use the deletion tools Sentry provides:
Errors: locate the affected events (for example, search by
user.emailoruser.id) and delete the issue they belong to. You cannot delete a single error event; deleting the issue deletes every event in it.Replays and attachments: delete each affected replay or attachment individually.
Spans/transactions, logs, profiles, and user feedback: these cannot be deleted individually. To remove them, delete the entire project from Settings > Projects > (project) > General Settings > Remove Project.
Events are immutable once ingested. You cannot edit an event or scrub a single field after processing; you can only delete it through the options above. See Can I scrub data from events that have already made it to Sentry? and when you should delete events.
Retention and backups also remove data on a fixed schedule, without any action from you:
Ingested data expires automatically after 30 to 90 days, depending on your plan and the data type. Once data passes its retention period, you can no longer access it. See the data retention periods documentation.
Sentry deletes production event-data backups 30 or 90 days after each backup is created, depending on the data type. See how frequently data is backed up.
If you need authoritative written confirmation of deletion semantics or backup-expiry timelines for a specific erasure incident, submit the Sentry data privacy request form so the request reaches the privacy team.