Account Deletion & Data Retention
How to close your account
In the app: Me → Settings → Delete account. You will be asked to confirm.
If you cannot get into the app, see Requesting deletion without the app below.
Requesting deletion without the app
Email privacy@localsville.com from any address with the phone number of the account. A person — not an automated system — verifies that the request comes from the account holder before initiating anything. That check does not require the app: Support contacts the phone number on file directly (a call or text from the published support line) and confirms the requester controls it — reinstalling or opening the app is never required to continue.
A verified request starts the exact same 30-day process as the in-app button, and because the account keeps its sign-in during the grace period, the true owner can always open the app and cancel a request they did not make. Receipt, verification method, initiation and completion are recorded.
What happens, and when
Immediately, when you ask
- Your account is marked for closure and a date is set 30 days out.
- Your profiles are deactivated — they stop appearing in discovery, search and public pages straight away.
- You stay signed in and can still see your own history.
For the next 30 days
Nothing is anonymised. You can cancel at any point in that window from Settings, and everything returns to normal. The delay is there on purpose: closing an account is easy to do in a bad moment, and hard to undo.
After 30 days
A job runs nightly and processes accounts whose 30 days have elapsed.
This anonymises your account in place. It does not delete your records.
| What | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Display name | Replaced with "Former member" |
| Phone number | Replaced with an unusable placeholder, freeing your real number for reuse |
| Profile tagline, story, neighbourhood, coordinates | Cleared |
| Profile status | Set to removed — permanently out of discovery |
| Photo records | Deleted from the database; the image files are purged by a weekly cleanup job, so they can persist for up to about a week afterwards |
| Push tokens, notification preferences | Deleted |
| Sign-in link | Severed — the account can never be signed into again |
| Messages, conversations | Kept, no longer carrying your name |
| Quotes, appointments, pickups, deliveries | Kept |
| Transactions, settlements, payout ledger entries, Stripe customer reference | Kept |
| Support requests, reports, moderation and safety records, appeals | Kept |
| Terms-acceptance and 18+ eligibility-attestation records (version + timestamp; no DOB is ever stored) | Kept — the durable record that the agreements and the eligibility representation were made |
Your sign-in identity
Sign-in is provided by Firebase. Final deletion also removes the Firebase Authentication user — the phone-auth identity — server-side, after the grace period: the anonymisation step queues the identity, and a trusted server worker deletes it from Firebase, retrying until Firebase confirms. The identifier itself is not retained once the identity is gone.
Why records are kept
Because they are not only yours.
A conversation has two people in it. A payment has a payer and someone who was paid, and both need the record for their own tax and dispute purposes. A safety report is a record about someone else's conduct — if closing an account erased it, closing an account would be a way to erase complaints against you. And some records we are simply required by law to retain.
What we remove is the part that identifies you. What stays is the part that belongs to the transaction or to someone else's safety.
When closure waits
Deletion does not proceed while something is unresolved. The nightly job re-checks each time and holds the account until the reason clears. The app tells you which one applies.
The exact reasons:
| Reason | Plain English |
|---|---|
active_commitments | An appointment, pickup or delivery is still open |
payment_in_flight | A payment is still being processed |
refund_unresolved | A refund has been requested or approved but not finished |
payout_owed | Money is owed to you and has not yet been paid out |
balance_owed | Your balance is negative — money is owed |
support_open | A support request is still open |
moderation_open | A moderation or safety review is under way |
partner_obligations | Your Local Partner membership has unfinished business |
settlement_pending | A transaction has not finished settling |
Suspended accounts
Suspension restricts use of the account, not the right to leave: a suspended person can request deletion from Settings like anyone else. Cancelling during the grace period returns the account to its prior state (a suspended account returns to suspended). Holds for open commitments, money movement or safety matters continue to apply before final closure.
Deleting less than everything
You do not have to close your account to remove things:
- edit or clear anything on your profile;
- delete individual photos;
- pause or deactivate a profile so it stops appearing publicly, and bring it back later;
- remove an offering.
Requests and questions
privacy@localsville.com. If you want a copy of your data, or think something is wrong, say so and we will respond.