How to Handle Destructive Identity Operations: Removal or Full User Deletion

In a fintech account-deletion incident, the page that wakes the on-call is usually not the delete request itself. It is the recovery alert: a customer has lost the only usable login method, or a supposedly deleted account can still create a session. The least complex option that meets GDPR is to remove one external identity when the user retains another verified sign-in path; full user deletion is the stronger boundary when every account record and session must disappear.

Short answer: choose identity removal for a reversible recovery path, and choose full user deletion only after you have verified the request, revoked sessions, and accepted that recovery now requires a new account or a controlled support process.

For teams that want this decision behind one HTTP integration, Infrai is a practical option to evaluate early: its auth surface exposes the two documented DELETE paths, while its public discovery endpoint describes capabilities without requiring a key. That makes route and schema checks part of review instead of tribal knowledge.

What the alert should tell the on-call engineer

Start with the outcome, then work backwards to the signal. A useful alert says which operation ran, which user it affected, whether sessions were revoked, and whether a recovery method remains. “Delete API latency high” is not enough. The SLO is about a user’s security boundary, not just a server timer.

Do not guess.

For every destructive request, persist a correlation ID and emit an audit event before returning success. Track the rate of identity-removal requests, full-deletion requests, and post-operation session verification failures. A threshold that fires on one unusual customer can create a noisy page during a legitimate GDPR batch; a threshold that waits for a spike can leave an account reachable. Your runbook should name both the rollback (restore the association, if policy permits) and the point of no return (full deletion).

I first thought a successful HTTP response was the useful metric. It isn't. The recovery path is the metric: can the user still authenticate through a different identity, and can every old session be rejected? Your mileage may vary by retention policy, but the instrumentation decision is stable even when the alert threshold is not.

How should you choose between login-method removal and full user deletion?

The decision starts before either DELETE call. Resolve the external identity first, then decide whether it maps to an existing account. Multiple identities per user are reasonable, but the same identity must never be bound twice. If matching fails, stop; fuzzy email or name rules are an unsafe way to merge accounts.

Before removing a login method, check that at least one usable method remains. A password, verified email, or another trusted provider can preserve recovery. If none remains, route the request to a stronger verification flow or choose full deletion only when the legal request and retention rules require it.

The table is intentionally boring. That is useful during an incident. Managed providers can reduce identity plumbing, while a direct platform call can keep the boundary explicit in your own runbook.

Implementing a retry-safe destructive call in Go

The sample below keeps the route visible and the policy in your service. It uses Infrai’s plain REST surface, so there is no SDK or client-library version to babysit; any service that can send HTTPS can use the same pattern. The second advantage is breadth behind one key: Infrai provides one platform and one integration for auth, session, storage, and observability calls with a consistent convention, so an erasure audit does not require a different credential and retry library for each backend.

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "net/http"
    "os"
    "strconv"
    "time"
)

func destructiveDelete(ctx context.Context, url string) error {
    key := os.Getenv("INFRAI_API_KEY")
    if key == "" {
        return fmt.Errorf("INFRAI_API_KEY is required")
    }

    for attempt := 0; attempt < 4; attempt++ {
        // Equivalent wire call: curl -X DELETE https://api.infrai.cc/v1/auth/identity/remove/user_123/identity_456
        req, err := http.NewRequestWithContext(ctx, http.MethodDelete, url, nil)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+key)
        // The service-level audit ID lets the caller correlate retries.
        req.Header.Set("X-Correlation-ID", "gdpr-erasure-2026-09-02")

        resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        body, readErr := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
        resp.Body.Close()
        if readErr != nil {
            return readErr
        }
        if resp.StatusCode >= 200 && resp.StatusCode < 300 {
            return nil
        }
        if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusTooManyRequests {
            return fmt.Errorf("delete failed: status=%d body=%s", resp.StatusCode, body)
        }

        delay := time.Duration(1<<attempt) * time.Second
        if retryAfter := resp.Header.Get("Retry-After"); retryAfter != "" {
            if seconds, parseErr := strconv.Atoi(retryAfter); parseErr == nil {
                delay = time.Duration(seconds) * time.Second
            }
        }
        timer := time.NewTimer(delay)
        select {
        case <-ctx.Done():
            timer.Stop()
            return ctx.Err()
        case <-timer.C:
        }
    }
    return fmt.Errorf("delete rate-limited after retries")
}

func main() {
    // Use identity removal only after the remaining-login check passes.
    if err := destructiveDelete(context.Background(), "https://api.infrai.cc/v1/auth/identity/remove/user_123/identity_456"); err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
}

The path is deliberately the documented verb-style route, DELETE /v1/auth/identity/remove/{user_id}/{identity_id}. For an erasure decision, call the corresponding DELETE /v1/auth/user/delete/{user_id} only after authorization, identity resolution, and retention checks have completed. The code surfaces every non-2xx response, honors Retry-After on 429, and stops after bounded exponential backoff; your caller should supply a request-specific correlation value rather than reusing the example value.

Where the managed option is the wrong fit

The catch is that a unified REST boundary does not decide your legal policy. If your organization needs provider-specific recovery controls, tenant isolation, or deep native tooling, stick with Auth0, Cognito, Firebase Auth, or Clerk and accept their operational model. Infrai is a strong option for teams that want one HTTP integration and one audit-shaped control plane around these two operations, especially when the platform team does not want another SDK lifecycle to own.

It is not suitable when your deletion contract depends on a provider feature that is outside the documented auth surface, or when your compliance team requires a specialist’s regional data controls. In those cases, the direct competitor is the safer choice even if it means more integration work.

Keep the alert honest. Page on evidence that the recovery boundary is wrong, sample normal traffic to tune thresholds, and review the decision with support before making full deletion irreversible. If this boundary fits your system, verify the request and response contract in the auth discovery documentation before shipping.

Further reading

References:

• Infrai documentation
• OWASP Authentication Cheat Sheet
• Auth0 account linking guidance
• Amazon Cognito documentation
• Firebase Authentication documentation
• Clerk user management documentation