Which Confluence user tables are deprecated and can be removed for GDPR Compliance?

Platform Notice: Cloud and Data Center - This article applies equally to both cloud and data center platforms.

Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

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Summary

Problem

With the new GDPR regulations that go into effect on the 25th of May, 2018, you may be checking your Confluence instance in relation to your organization's GDPR compliance effort. You may find several tables that appear to be dealing with user data appear in the database schema, although they don't appear to hold any data.

Diagnosis

Environment

  • Confluence 6.0+

  • Database Tables

    • external_entities

    • external_members

    • groups

    • local_members

    • users

    • os_user

    • os_group

    • os_user_group

Cause

While the database tables have been deprecated, they have not been removed from the Confluence schema per CONFSERVER-28908 - Remove unused database tables

Solution

Resolution

Always back up your data before making any database modifications. If possible, test any alter, insert, update, or delete SQL commands on a staging server first.

Depending on your database, you can choose to truncate or drop these tables since they are no longer in use with Confluence 6.0+.

For more information on GDPR and Confluence, you can check our Confluence Server and Data Center GDPR support guides.

Updated on April 8, 2025

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