Starting on 19.09.2018 we will begin to automatically delete unused contacts.
We will be deleting contacts which have not been connected to a product (domain, trademark, application, certificate, registrar) for at least 120 days. We are also offering an option to exclude a contact from automatic deletion. This can be done with the AUTODELETE parameter in AddContact and ModifyContact. However, in regards to GDPR, this can be subject to change. The default value for all existing and newly created contacts is "AUTODELETE = 1" (YES).
If a contact gets automatically deleted, we will send out a contact deletion event. Due to the high amount of unused contacts in our system and the expected load, we will not delete all contacts directly on the 19th of September but rather do these in smaller batches over the following weeks.
After a contact deletion, it will be possible to restore such contact using our API call RestoreContact. After the restore has been processed, this contact is set to "AUTODELETE = 1" (YES) and will begin counting 120 days starting from 0 unless it will be connected to a product.
We also made a few changes to our API that will help to handle this auto deletion process.