Account & Data Deletion Policy

1. 1

   1. Open Settings

   Go to Settings → Account & security.

2. 2

   2. Consider exporting first

   Download your data gives you a machine-readable copy of what the account holds. Do it before deleting, not after — after deletion there is nothing to export.

3. 3

   3. Choose Delete account

   You will be shown what deletion removes and asked to type your username to confirm. That step exists so the button cannot be pressed by accident.

4. 4

   4. Confirm

   Deletion begins immediately. You are signed out, and the account is gone.

• Your account record: username, email address, phone number, password hash, two-factor settings, and any linked third-party sign-in.
• Your profile: display name, bio, pronouns, location, website, avatar and banner, including the stored image files.
• Your posts, comments, poll answers and the media attached to them, subject to Section 4.
• Your votes, saved posts, community memberships and follows.
• Your direct messages, subject to Section 4.3.
• Your notifications, notification state, drafts and unsent text.
• Your search history and recent searches.
• Your blocks, mutes and interface preferences.
• Your sessions, on every device.
• Local storage on the device you deleted from.

Erasure of live systems begins immediately. Removal from backups follows the backup cycle described in Section 4.2.

Some things cannot be erased on request. We set them out plainly rather than promising an erasure we could not deliver.

4.1 Legal retention

Rule 3(1)(g) of the IT Rules, 2021 requires an intermediary to keep the information you registered with for 180 days after the registration is withdrawn or cancelled. We keep that, and only that, for that period. It is isolated from live systems, is not visible to anyone on Boznaw, and is used for nothing except answering a lawful request.

Where a court order or a requisition from an authorised government agency requires us to retain other specific records, we retain those for the period required and no longer.

4.2 Backups

Backups exist so that a failure does not destroy everyone's data. A backup taken before your deletion still contains your data until that backup ages out, after 30 days. Deleted data is never restored to live systems from a backup: if a backup is ever restored, the deletion is reapplied.

4.3 Content that is also someone else's

• Direct messages you sent remain in the recipient's inbox. A message is a record of a conversation between two people, and we cannot erase one person's copy of a conversation at the other person's request. Your copy is erased.
• Replies other people made to you remain, because they are their Content. Where a reply quotes you, the quotation remains part of their post.
• Communities you created are not deleted with your account. Deleting your account removes you as a moderator; the Community and its Content continue, since other members' Content is not yours to remove.
• Content other people have already copied, screenshotted, quoted off-platform, or that a search engine or archive has already indexed, is beyond our reach. We can remove it from Boznaw; we cannot remove it from the internet.

4.4 Safety and enforcement records

Where an account is terminated for a serious breach, we keep the minimum needed to recognise an attempt to return — and no Content. Where you reported someone, the report remains part of that enforcement record, and remains anonymous. Retention periods are in the Privacy Policy.

4.5 Aggregated and anonymised data

Counts that no longer identify anyone — how many members a Community has, how many posts it carries — are not personal data and are not affected by deletion.

You do not have to leave in order to remove something.

• When the purpose ends. Section 8(7) of the DPDP Act requires erasure once the purpose data was collected for is no longer served and no law requires retention. The retention table in the Privacy Policy sets out the periods.
• When an account should not exist. If we learn an account belongs to a person under 18, we close it and erase the associated personal data.
• At scale, after inactivity. Rule 8 of the DPDP Rules, 2025 will require a social media intermediary with two crore or more registered users in India to erase a User's data three years after their last engagement, on at least 48 hours' notice. Boznaw is below that threshold and this does not apply today.

If you cannot reach the deletion control — you have lost access to the account, or something in the interface fails — write to the data protection contact with the username and the email address or phone number registered to it, and we will erase it. You have a right to erasure under Section 12 of the DPDP Act, and a broken button does not take it away.

If a deletion request is not honoured, use Grievance Redressal. That complaint carries the statutory 24-hour acknowledgement and 7-day resolution periods.