Segment employs its hub position to implement GDPR deletion or suppression requests

Segment acts as a universal API, connecting more than 200 marketing and analytical tools to its client companies so they don’t need to do all that integration.

As part of its interconnection service, it offers a customer data platform that can act as a single point of reference for customer data used by those tools.

Today, the San Francisco-based firm is using its central position to help implement several key requirements of the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). When a data controller is so requested by a consumer, Segment can act to delete user data or to end any subsequent user tracking (suppression), thus cutting off that flow of personal data to the ecosystem of tools it supports.

Such actions don’t prevent a client company from keeping the user data or continuing user tracking if it works directly with any of the 200+ tools, but it does block such actions from going through the Segment hub.

Segment product manager Chris Sperandio told me that his company is “super excited about GDPR.” Since Segment is a “choke point” for data to and from the integrated tools, he said, it can readily support such GDPR blocking functions.

The data request can be issued through a Segment user interface that deletes the data, or that prevents user data from being tracked on specific users. A deletion request also removes the data from Segment’s supported data services — Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Postgres and Amazon S3.

Segment also can implement user data requests, Sperandio said, in the integrated applications that have “exposed deletion end points.” Currently, those tools are analytics firm Amplitude, communications platform Intercom and mobile marketing firm Braze (formerly Appboy).

Amplitude and Braze are also involved in a new OpenGDPR framework to standardize data subject request management. Segment is not currently part of that effort.

Questions about GDPR? Download our free guide, The General Data Protection Regulation: GDPR — A Guide for Marketers.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.