# Deleted user address appears in email log

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/deleted-user-address-appears-in-email-log/385760>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Tags:** email, gdpr\
**Created:** [October 15, 2025, 8:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/deleted-user-address-appears-in-email-log/385760 "2025-10-15T20:31:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![ToddZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/toddz/32/328350_2.png) [@ToddZ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ToddZ)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2025, 8:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/deleted-user-address-appears-in-email-log/385760/1 "2025-10-15T20:31:19Z")

</div>

In reviewing the email log, I noticed that we would appear to be emailing an address that doesn’t have a user:

 ![ghost_user_email](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/9/b/3/9b34a4bdb43b10cbfd58b354f8dc95493794ede1.gif)

Research elsewhere shows that this was a recently self-deleted user. These log entries do predate the deletion – but there are no similar entries for other deleted users.

Just wondering how things work: does user deletion normally remove such traces?

This makes it sound like “yes”…

> [@Is there a way to retrieve information about deleted users?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-retrieve-information-about-deleted-users/166031/4):
>
> I don’t think there is any way to recover the email address of a deleted user. Discourse handles deleting users differently than it handles deleting posts or topics. When a user is deleted, they are fully deleted from the database, when a post or topic is deleted it is only soft-deleted so it can be recovered at a later time.

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