Objective
This article describes how to block identifiers when defining the identity resolution rules in Unify, and the possible ways to do so.
Product
Twilio Segment
Environment
Segment Console
Procedure
- In the Unify space, go to Unify Settings -> identity Resolution.
- Click on the identifier that you want to block values for and scroll down to 'Blocked Values'.
- Here you can add recommended values such as 'Zeroes and dashes' or 'anonymous'. It is also possible to refine regex expressions for pattern matching. Regex Negative lookahead is not supported.
Additional Information
Segment recommends that you proactively prevent using certain values as identifiers. While these values remain in the payload on the event itself, it is not promoted to an identifier Segment uses to determine user profiles.
This is important when developers have a hard-coded value for fields like user_id during QA or development that then erroneously make it to production. This may cause hundreds of profiles to merge incorrectly and can have costly consequences if these spaces already feed data into a production email marketing tool or push notification tool downstream.
Before sending data through, Segment also recommends that you add any default hard-coded values that your team uses during the development process, such as void or abc123.
For additional information, refer to the Identity Resolution Onboarding Guide.