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Deleting a User Account

  • As a user, you can delete your own account by navigating to Settings > Account and selecting Delete account
  • As an admin, you can delete a user account by navigating to the Admin Area, selecting the Users tab, selecting a user, and clicking on Remove user

Associated Records

Introduced for issues in GitLab 9.0, and for merge requests, award emoji, notes, and abuse reports in GitLab 9.1. Hard deletion from abuse reports and spam logs was introduced in GitLab 9.1, and from the API in GitLab 9.3.

When a user account is deleted, not all associated records are deleted with it. Here's a list of things that will not be deleted:

  • Issues that the user created
  • Merge requests that the user created
  • Notes that the user created
  • Abuse reports that the user reported
  • Award emoji that the user created

Instead of being deleted, these records will be moved to a system-wide "Ghost User", whose sole purpose is to act as a container for such records.

When a user is deleted from an abuse report or spam log, these associated records are not ghosted and will be removed, along with any groups the user is a sole owner of. Administrators can also request this behaviour when deleting users from the API or the admin area.