Suspended users appear when Zendesk flags an account as spam or suspicious. Their tickets stay in your system, but the profile is locked — and that’s where problems begin.
When you try to anonymize these tickets, the process often fails because the requester can’t be processed. That means you can’t move forward with data cleanup, even though the ticket itself still contains personal data that should be anonymized.
The solution: Unlink the requester before anonymizing
To get around this, you’ll want to separate the suspended user from the ticket first and then run the anonymization. This prevents Zendesk from trying to modify a locked profile, which is the root cause of the failed anonymization attempt.
The Unlink Requester option in the GDPR Compliance app does exactly that. It removes the requester from the ticket so the anonymization can continue without interruption. The ticket stays in your system, just without personal data attached to it.
This approach keeps your ticket history intact and avoids losing valuable internal context like agent notes, issue descriptions, and resolution steps.
How to anonymize tickets from suspended users
1. Open the GDPR Compliance app inside your Zendesk account.
2. Start a new GDPR process, select the previously created list of suspended users’ tickets, and choose the Anonymization process. (You can also run it for a single user.)
3. On the second step of the process setup, enable Unlink Requester in the Ticket Anonymization preferences.
4. Run the anonymization process.
Once completed, the ticket stays in your system with personal data removed. The ticket is no longer linked to the suspended requester, so the anonymization finishes successfully while the ticket history remains intact.
When you should use this approach
This method is best suited for situations where you want to keep your ticket data but remove personal information from suspended or blocked users. It helps you stay compliant without disrupting your reporting or internal workflows.
You should use this approach when:
- You have suspended or spam users whose tickets still need to be anonymized.
- You want to avoid anonymization errors that occur because of locked user profiles.
- Your team relies on ticket history for reporting, QA reviews, or internal documentation.
- You don’t want to lose important communication threads or internal notes tied to those tickets.
In short, use Unlink Requester when you want to clean up user data safely without sacrificing valuable ticket context or affecting your Zendesk workflows.
Wrap-up
Suspended users can interrupt your data cleanup workflow, but they don’t have to. By unlinking the requester before anonymizing, you keep your ticket history intact while still removing personal data. It’s a simple adjustment that prevents errors, protects privacy, and keeps your Zendesk records consistent.
If your team anonymizes data regularly or handles right-to-be-forgotten requests, enabling Unlink Requester is a small step that can save a lot of time and frustration.