Current behavior
Merging a Lead into a User is permanent. There is no self-serve way to unlink the channel identity afterwards or restore the profiles to their previous state.
The problem
If a channel Lead (in our case, Telegram) is accidentally merged into the wrong User profile:
- The wrong user can see the entire Telegram conversation history through the Messenger widget on the website — messages that are not theirs, which is a real data-exposure concern.
- All new incoming Telegram messages keep arriving on that wrong profile, so the exposure grows with every message.
- The only self-serve fix is deleting the affected profile entirely, which removes all of that contact's data — rarely acceptable when it is a real customer.
Proposed idea
Add the ability to unlink a channel identity from a contact — ideally as an API endpoint, with a UI option as a bonus. For example:
POST /contacts/{id}/unlink_channel_identity (with the channel type: telegram, whatsapp, etc.)
After unlinking, the next incoming message from that channel identity would create a fresh Lead, which the team can then merge into the correct User profile.
We understand that restoring the original Lead profile and its historical conversations may be off the table by design. Even a minimal version — a way to simply stop new messages from that channel identity from reaching the wrong profile — would already be a big improvement, because it caps the exposure and makes an incorrect merge recoverable.
Who would benefit
Any workspace that uses social channels (Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.) and routinely merges Leads into website Users. Today, a merge has permanent, privacy-relevant consequences with no way to undo it.