Deleting personal user information

There are two methods to delete a user's personal information.

Option 1: Overwrite personal information

It is best practice to disable users, rather than delete them, to maintain user history and content. For details, see the Removing User Access documentation.

  1. Go to the Users page in Looker's Admin panel.
  2. Select the Sudo button to the right of the user's information to impersonate the user.

  3. Go to the user's Account.

  4. Delete or overwrite any user changeable User Attributes that contain personal information. These do not always appear on the user admin page.

  5. Select Save.

  6. Select Stop Sudoing in the red bar at the top of the screen.

  7. Go back to the Users page in Looker's Admin panel.

  8. Select Edit to see the user's details.

  9. Change the user's account to Disabled.

  10. Overwrite the First Name to something else, like "disabled-user-1".

  11. Overwrite the Last Name to something else, like "disabled-user-1".

  12. Overwrite the Email to something else, like "disabled@user-1.com".

  13. Delete or overwrite any User Attributes that contain personal information. If an attribute's source is "System setting" you can't change it directly. Looker will update it as you work through this procedure.

  14. Delete or overwrite any Access Filter Fields that contain personal information.

  15. Select Save.

Be sure to address the user's Git activity.

Option 2: Delete the user

Deleting a user is irreversible. Consider your organization's compliance and security needs before doing so.

Looker generally suggests disabling a user. If you delete a user, all of their history and content is erased and cannot be recovered. For details, see the Removing User Access documentation.

To delete the user, navigate to the Users page in Looker's Admin panel, and then follow these steps:

  1. To see the user's details, select the Edit button to the right of the user's information.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Delete.
  3. Confirm the deletion.

Be sure to address the user's Git activity.

Deleting the user's Git activity

Looker's developer branch names contain the first and last name of the user. You must delete any Looker user's Git branch.

If you host your Git repo, ask your Git administrator to delete the user's branch.

If Looker hosts your Git repo, contact privacy@looker.com to request that the branch be deleted.

SSO authentication considerations

If you use a single sign-on (SSO) method — like SAML, LDAP, OpenID, or Google — it is not sufficient to change user information on your SSO provider. Looker stores copies of user information; you must complete the above steps to delete the information within Looker. Removing user information from the SSO provider does not remove API authentication credentials.