Often consultant get confuse between Adobe Privacy Service (UI) and Data Repair API respectively. This post will cover what these tools are and the use case, please review the official documentation on these two tools for details.

Adobe Privacy Service

The Adobe Privacy Service provides Adobe customers with a user interface and APIs to help manage their customer data requests AFTER the data has been collected as opposed to an opt-in service such as OneTrust which blocks all data from being captured in real-time. The Privacy Service allows you to selectively delete data from all Adobe solutions such as Adobe Analytics, Target etc. based on user identifiers or namespaces such as ECID or encrypted user ids. Please note that the Privacy API should not be used to delete PII data captured accidentally but should only be used to serve delete requests from data subjects.

A privacy job request can be made by visiting the privacy page (requires IMS authentication). There is an option to pick the regulation type (GDPR, CCPA etc.) and delete IDs either manually or in bulk by uploading IDs in a JSON file.

Use Case The primary use case for leveraging the Privacy Service is to either access or delete data for users who explicitly reach out to a brand to request a copy of all their personal data or ask for their.

What is the Data Repair API?

The data repair API makes it easier for companies to manage their sensitive data, by significantly reducing processing time to make changes and reducing the costs of data deletion so it easier to keep up with and maintain the evolving privacy standards in the industry.

The Data Repair API is a paid service however it would be cost effective in comparison to  data reprocessing. Reporting APIs are free. Data Repair APIs are charged and requires additional contract. Data Insertion APIs will incur cost on the basis of number of server calls.

The Data Repair API provides you with a way to delete or edit Adobe Analytics data.

Repair requests are made by submitting a job definition to the Data Repair API, which includes the report suite, date range, variables and actions to be applied to the data.

https://github.com/AdobeDocs/analytics-2.0-apis/blob/master/data-repair.md

The Data Repair API provides Adobe Analytics customers access to APIs which allows them to delete any data which they want to remove. This API scans all rows of data for a particular report suite and deletes all data in a custom variable defined as part of the API request.

The primary use case for leveraging the Data Repair API is to completely delete data from Adobe Analytics variables. The typical scenario is when a customer may have inadvertently captured PII data in an Analytics variable.

What are some of the technical capabilities of the Data Repair API?

• Delivered through Adobe I/O

• API will generate Data Rows Scanned volumes upon request, so a customer can then predict the cost of Data Cleansing to project based on estimates

• Ability for customer to check on the status of job

Is the Data Repair API available to anyone?

There are two possible ways to obtain usage of the Data Repair API:

• Analytics Ultimate customers will obtain a 1.2 billion yearly bucket entitlement with their SKU. This API is currently only available for Adobe Analytics customers and requires a $0 addendum (free) to be added to your contract. In addition, up to 1.2 Billion server calls are included for free and any volume over that, will be billed separately. Please note that this information may vary so best is to check with Account manager before commenting to Client.

• An Add-on for the Data Repair API will be available with any core analytics SKU and will be based on rows of data scanned as the billable metric.

How will the Data Repair API handle overages?

• Data Repair API tracks the number of Data Rows Scanned when the API is used by customer, and then generates a usage summary.

• Additional Data Rows Scanned generated from Data Repair API will be billed as overage in arrears at the overage CPMM Unit Rate mentioned in the footnote

Which data can be repaired?

The Data Repair API provides Adobe Analytics customers access to APIs which allows them to delete any data which they want to remove. This API scans all rows of data for a particular report suite and deletes all data in a custom variable defined as part of the API request.

The primary use case for leveraging the Data Repair API is to completely delete data from Adobe Analytics variables. The typical scenario is when a customer may have inadvertently captured PII data in an Analytics variable.

Only data available within a report suite is available for data repair.

Can a Data Repair job be cancelled?

There’s a short window at the beginning where it cancelled, but once the job starts changing data, it can’t be canceled.

When the data is deleted/repaired, can we see the data be deleted incrementally or does all the data show deleted/repaired once processing is complete?

The time window for cancellation varies based on job complexity and is something we’re phasing out as it hasn’t offered much value and slows down processing.

The repair is processed in parallel by month, so when one month finishes, it will be visible in reporting.  However, it will not necessarily show up in order (i.e. Jan, then Feb, then Mar).

We suggest an incremental approach to each job where and older, smaller date range is submitted first and validated before moving to a more recent, broader date range.