topic Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR in GDPR

Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

jamesmarkey — Thu, 24 May 2018 09:27:43 GMT

At the moment, it is only possible to delete contacts individually.

When will it be possible to delete multiple contacts following GDPR rules? Or is there a work-around for the time being?

Many thanks in advance.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

cbsembler — Thu, 24 May 2018 13:12:05 GMT

Hello @jamesmarkey,

To GDPR delete you will need to individually delete the contacts and select either hard or soft GDPR delete.

If you are looking to bulk delete contacts you can still do this from your Contacts Dashboard but this is not the GDPR delete function.

As of right now, there is no expected roll-out of a GDPR bulk delete.

Thank you,

Courtney

Please note: while these features live in HubSpot, your legal team is the best resource to give you compliance advice for your specific situation.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

jamesmarkey — Thu, 24 May 2018 13:15:54 GMT

Thank you both for your responses.

It would be a very useful tool (for many people, I'm sure) if you are able to implement a bulk GDPR contact delete option.

Let me know if it gets considered in the future!

No bulk GDPR delete function?

neil-rd — Fri, 25 May 2018 08:40:37 GMT

Hi, I have several thousand contacts to delete following my GDPR re-permission campaign.

I am shocked that there is no way to bulk delete contacts in a GDPR-compliant way.

Do I really have to spend the next few days manually deleting contacts one by one?

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:02:16 GMT

We need this feature to be able to mass delete. Then 30 days, it's fully purged.

This is the new standard with all email clients and CRM's.

When will this feature be added?

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:03:49 GMT

It's mandatory to have a full purge button. If not you will open up your legalities.

How is it most CRM in EU have this ability? Salesforce and Microsoft have... even Microsoft Azure has this ability now.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

jennih — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 07:26:22 GMT

Hi,

We need to be able to delete all data associated to the contacts. We often need to delete personal data of a larger group. This is why the bulk GDPR deletion would be really handy. Hopefully you can add the bulk deletion feature soon.

PS. The deleted contacts need to be able to resubsrcribe after their data has been deleted.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

Apta — Sat, 13 Jul 2019 03:36:21 GMT

Surely you're joking about not being able to bulk delete in GDPR compliancy. Even Mailchimp has implemented GDPR compliant bulk delete. Is this HubSpot's way to make more income by not allowing bulk delete actions?

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

JBL — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:27:45 GMT

What's up about that? I am actually really surprised there seemed to be nothing done in this regards... This is a must.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

chris_molloy — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 14:40:40 GMT

In my opinion the solution isn't a solution. Nobody is going to go through 7000+ contacts and delete them one by one. Bulk mailing lists and A/B testing require high numbers of contacts to be effective in my view so why would HubSpot not offer a bulk solution to handle all the opt outs, it shouldn't be a surprise that people need this.

Alternative, if you create a list with a logic to display all contacts who have rejected consent you can export the list and save it (for later). After you've exported the XLSX and it's saved go back to the list in HubSpot, mark all the contacts, and delete them. Then take that file you saved and import it as an opt out blocklist so you're at least covered from emailing them again until they re-subscribe. In my opinion if you re-import your contacts as an opt-out blocklist it should serve as a sign of due dilligance while we wait for a more elegant solution.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

kalleraita — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 14:37:16 GMT

Looking at the docs it has been 2 years and the situation is still the same: No mass delete if you want to follow GDPR. What did I miss?

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

twatson — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 17:57:22 GMT

You didn't miss anything, HUBSPOT did. They are apparently not implementing this capability, making it look like it is a GDPR rule, when in fact it is only their own limitation. Other CRM and contact management programs allow bulk delete under GDPR. They just are not bothering to do it, preferring to make platform users delete thousands of records one-at-a-time. I'm pretty disgusted with this (and also the lack of a "forawrd to a friend" function in email).

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

twatson — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 18:38:28 GMT

This is not an acceptable response: no bulk delete or archive solution with GDPR turned on, and no prospect of one. This restriction runs contrary to GDPR principles and rules:

"Data erasure is a large part of the GDPR. It is one of the six data protection principles: Article 5(e) states that personal data can be stored for “no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed.” Data erasure is also one of the personal rights protected by the GDPR in Article 17, the famous “right to be forgotten.” “The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay.” There are some exceptions to this latter requirement, such as the public interest. But generally speaking, you have an obligation to erase personal data you no longer need." https://gdpr.eu/email-encryption/

Hubspot, you are making it far too diffucult to comply with this regulation.

This needs to be rectified ASAP by Hubspot. It has been more than three years since GDPR went into effect. While other major MA and CRM platoforms have this capability - even MailChimp - Hubspot still does not.

If there is a legal basis for not implementing this, you owe it to your users to at least provide a link to the guiding reference from the GDPR documentation. So far, I have found no such reference. The "consult your legal team" reply is insufficient when you don't provide a reference for your unusual policy.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

jamesmarkey — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 19:42:39 GMT

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Although, I'm not sure this should be an "accepted solution" after so much time has lapsed now, as GDPR is not optional. Surely we should be able to bulk GDPR-delete by now?

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

jtsang — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 18:51:24 GMT

Three years later since the original post and there is still not a bulk GDPR-compliant delete function in hubspot. Preparing myself and team to delete thousands of contacts individually.... 😫

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

twatson — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 15:14:10 GMT

If it makes any difference, we recently had to remove >1500 contacts with the same GDPR-caused limitation. We discovered that we could put those contacts in a list and delete 100 of them at a time. I was concerned it was only removing the contacts from the list, but the pop-up warning indicates they will be removed from the database, and doing a follow-up check afterward verified that. That's the best we could do, but it saved a lot of time vs one-at-a-time.
Even with this workaround, Hubspot needs to enable a true bulk delete for GDPR.

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

04402 — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 16:34:22 GMT

Good news!!!

I had this exact same problem, got onto Hubspot support and they sent me the below:

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

karstenkoehler — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:18:52 GMT

Hi @04402,

My understanding is that contacts that are deleted regularly can be created again, while contacts which were GDPR deleted can't be. I'd recommend double checking this with your support rep. See here:

"In HubSpot, GDPR deletion includes a blocklist functionality, which means that once a contact is GDPR-deleted, you will not be able to add them back to your account in the future. This functionality is supported by anonymized data."

Best regards!

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

Gianluca-Alviti — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 19:12:58 GMT

Hello Sembler,
we've have the same problem here and after reading so much compliant users through many forum about bulk GDPR-compliant delete function in Hubspot, I think you'd really consider to implement that in a near future. Thank you 🙂
Gianluca

Re: Deleting multiple contacts under GDPR

bruj02 — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 08:37:08 GMT

This bulk GDPR delete should be mandatory.