Does AEP automatically clean up old identity nodes when email/phone updates via batch ingestion?

Question

Hi All,For batch ingestion via Source Connector, we have been using field descriptors for hashed email and phone identities. We are now evaluating a move to identityMap approach.One thing we want to confirm before migrating — when a user's email or phone updates in a new batch, does AEP automatically remove the old identity node from the graph?Or does the old node persist and require manual cleanup? Curious if anyone has observed this behavior in production.

akhil_merupula · Answer

Hi ​@santoshkr,AEP does not automatically remove old identity nodes when an email or phone updates via batch ingestion. The identity graph is additive by design, new identity links are added, but existing nodes are not deleted when a value changes.What happens in practice: if a user’s email changes and the new batch injects the updated email as an identity, AEP creates a new node for the new email and links it to the same profile. The old email node remains in the graph unless explicitly removed via the Identity Service API (DELETE /identity/cluster).This means over time you can accumulate stale identity nodes, which can cause unintended profile merges if the old email/phone gets reused by another person, a real risk worth planning for.For the identityMap migration specifically, the behavior is the same, identityMap doesn’t change the graph’s additive nature, it just changes how you’re sending the identity data in.Recommended approach: implement a periodic identity graph audit and use the Privacy Service or Identity deletion APIs to clean up stale nodes proactively, especially for high-churn identifiers like phone numbers.

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