Devices & Users

FlareLane works with two types of targets: devices and users. A device belongs to a user, and a single user can have multiple devices.

This is the basic target unit in FlareLane. A device is created when an app is installed or a web push subscription is made, and represents an anonymous target whose identity has not yet been established. Each device has a unique ID and push token. If the app is deleted and reinstalled, the existing device expires and a new device and push token are created.

The conditions and timing for device creation differ slightly between mobile apps and the web. Specifically:

• On mobile apps, a device is created immediately after the app is installed and launched.
• On the web, because there are typically many anonymous, non-member visitors, a device is not created immediately. Instead, a virtual device ID is assigned and held in a pending state. A device with that device ID is created only later, once there is state to save, such as linking a user ID or tags, or subscribing to web push.

A user is a member managed within your own systems. When a User ID is linked at a point where the user can be identified, such as login, the FlareLane device is matched to your user.

When a user deletes their account, you can use FlareLane's Delete Users API to immediately destroy the related user data in FlareLane. Deleting a user performs the following:

• Deletes the user's data in FlareLane (including linked user profile and tags)
• Unlinks the user ID from devices connected to that user ID (the devices themselves are not deleted)
• If the user has a linked email or phone number, removes that email and phone number from their respective unsubscribe lists (re-registering makes them eligible to receive messages again)