Removing Customer Data

You can use the customer data removal offline integration to delete data from the user profiles of customers who have indicated they want to stop receiving your segment-based advertising.

To remove data, you send Oracle Data Cloud an offline file with the IDs of the users whose data should be removed. Separate files are required for each ID type, such as:

BKUUIDs
Email hashes
Account ID hashes.
ADIDs
IDFAs.

The Oracle Data Cloud platform uses the ID to find the profile for each user. If a match if found, the platform removes all the data that was collected by the sites (containers) in your DMP seat from the users' profiles, all other profiles linked to those profiles, and the Oracle Data Cloud offline database.

Important! You are responsible for blocking data from further being collected on users that do not want to receive your first-party segment advertising. If you do not actively block data collection on these users, their user profiles remain active.

In addition to removing their data through this process, you can inform them about opting out from Oracle Data Cloud third-party interest-based advertising by providing a link to http://datacloudoptout.oracle.com. You can also provide links for users to opt-out of other targeted advertising platforms by providing links to the following industry sites:

Network Advertising Initiative (NAI): http://optout.networkadvertising.org.
Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA): http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
European Interactive Digital Adverting Alliance (EDAA): http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/ and http://www.edaa.eu/.

In this topic

Requesting the customer data removal integration

Contact your account manager and request the customer data removal integration. Provide your company name and DMP partner ID. If you have multiple DMP seats, specify all the partner IDs that you want to be included in this integration. Your account manager does the following:

Configure the site ID in your Oracle Data Cloud core tag so you can ID sync your customers.
Provide you with special site IDs for your partner and MAID data that are configured for clearing your first-party data from the containers in your DMP seat. You need to include the site ID in the name of the offline file.
Provide you with an SFTP directory, user name, and password for uploading your offline files to the Oracle Data Cloud upload server (sftp.bluekai.com).

ID syncing your customers

The customer data removal process requires that your IDs be swapped with Oracle Data Cloud. An ID swap is the transfer of unique user IDs (UUIDs) between you and the Oracle Data Cloud platform. You may have already configured ID swapping if you do not use the Oracle Data Cloud core tag for data onboarding.

If you have not already configure ID swapping, you must do so before using the customer data removal process. To configure ID swapping, you must configure you Oracle Data Cloud core tag to pass user IDs to the bk_addPageCtx function. The following code provides an example:

//pass UUIDs for ID swaps by using the following syntax:
                
//bk_addPageCtx('id', 'ID Value');
                
bk_addPageCtx("id", "3xd18mqwtCfxsYDO");

For more information on passing your partner IDs into the Oracle Data Cloud core tag, see Oracle Data Cloud Core Tag Implementation.

Creating upload files

To send your the data removal request to Oracle Data Cloud, you create the following two files:

Offline file. Contains the users to be removed from your first-party segment advertising. Each file may only contain only one ID type. The maximum file size is 50 MB.
Trigger file. Contains the name, size, and checksum of your offline file. It is used to validate the transfer of your offline data.

Offline file format and syntax

The offline file must be a UTF-8- encoded plain text file that contains one line per user. Each line, including the last one, must be terminated by LF (Unix style end-of-line). Each line can contain only one ID.

The following file types are supported. Uncompressed files are rejected and deleted from the file share.

.bz2
.gz
.bzip2
gzip

The maximum file size is 50 MB. Split larger files to avoid exceeding the maximum size.

The offline file should include your partner name, the site ID, the ID type, and the date or timestamp. The file name may not contain spaces or any special characters other than an underscore or hyphen. The recommended file name syntax is:

Partner_mobileSiteID_YYYY-MM-DD

For example:

SampleCo_15415_2019-12-26.gz

Example offline file content

The following example shows the content of an offline file that includes Oracle Data Cloud BKUUIDs.

dWAO9WuIfNt1Y2WF
dWAO9s0IfNNrxWG7
dWAO9stIfN6tQpGl
dWAO9stIfNNoxwWf
dWAO9sbIfNld3HQG
dWAO9W0IfNNgJuRA
dWAO9sIIfNl782x3
dWAO9WtIfNtiITLI
dWAO9WbIfNlI0OW8
dWAO9WIIfNlH2yQF
dWAO9WVIfN6C4WyF
dWAO9WIIfNlJloQi
dWAO9WSIfNlvOBXf
dWAO9WSIfN6D2WAl
dWAO9WKIfNtESh9F
dWAO9YiIfNlQMRAT
dWAO9WiIfN6S7XDl
dWAO9YiIfNlupBxN
dWAO9YZIfNtIbzx7
dWAO9Y3IfNNaEpAh
dWAO9YrIfNNOanDf
dWAO9aYIfNtYYfGN
dWAO9asIfNNZyNWr
dWAO9YuIfNlkk59k

The following example shows the content of an offline file that includes partner-specific IDs (PUUIDs).

Trigger file format and syntax

A trigger file specifies the size, name, checksum, and optionally the number of records in your offline file. It is used to verify that all the data in your offline file was successfully transferred, without any corruption. If validation is successful, the Oracle Data Cloud platform begins onboarding your offline file; if validation fails, your account manager contacts you to explain the errors.

The trigger file must have the same name as the offline file, but with a.trigger file extension appended.

SampleCo_15415_2019-12-26.gz.trigger

The trigger file must be an uncompressed UTF-8 encoded plain text file with the following contents:

FILE=partner_siteID_YYYY-MM-DD.gz

SIZE=offline_file_size

SHA256SUM=checksum

where

FILE is the exact name of the offline file being uploaded.
SIZE is the size of the offline file in bytes. See Calculating the offline file size to get this value.
SHA256SUM is the string checksum value of the offline file. The checksum value acts as a fingerprint for a file and changes each time the content of the file is modified. See Calculating the offline file checksum to get this value.

Example trigger file contents

FILE=SampleCo_15415_2019-12-26.gz.trigger 
SIZE=100570 
SHA256SUM=446c164056d18a6d9aaefb0c96043d82

Calculating the offline file size

You can use any tool that calculates the size of a file in bytes. Operating system include utilities for this purpose. For example, on UNIX platforms, you can enter the following at the command line:
$ ls -l fileName

The command returns information about the file, including its size. For example, if the following information is returned, the file size is 367 bytes.

-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 367 Feb 6 16:00 a.gz,

Calculating the SHA-256 checksum

You can use any tool that is based on SHA-256 to calculate the checksum of the offline file you are uploading. Most operating systems include built in command-line utilities for this purpose. For example, on Linux you can enter the following at the command line:

$sha256sum fileName

Uploading the user data removal files

After you have created your offline files, you upload your offline file and trigger file to the Oracle SFTP servers.

Before you upload a production file, perform a test by uploading a small file with a minimum of 1,000 records. The Oracle Data Cloud operations team then verifies you file format and provides any required corrections. After the operations team has approved your sample file, you may begin uploading production files.

To upload user data removal files

Upload your an offline file to sftp.bluekai.com using the SFTP directory, user name, and password you received from Oracle Data Cloud.
After the offline file has been completely uploaded, upload the trigger file.
A script automatically downloads the file into the platform’s offline match rules-based classification system. Your account manager receives an automated confirmation that the upload was successful. Oracle Data Cloud validates your offline file and then begins processing your customer data removal. This process takes 48 to 72 hours to complete.

Receiving confirmation of data removal

After your data removal request is processed, Oracle Data Cloud provides confirmation. A confirmation file is posted to the SFTP directory where you uploaded the data removal file. The confirmation file has the same name as theoriginal file, with .report appended.

This confirmation file includes a status entry for each ID in your original data removal file. There are three possible statuses:

Success. Data was removed successfully.
Not Found. The ID was not found in the Oracle Data Cloud user profile store.
Error. Data was not removed because of an error.