Deleting your Seldeo account

Deleting an account is not a step we make hard on purpose. This article walks through the exact steps, what happens behind each of them, and the recourse you have if you change your mind or if something looks wrong afterwards.

Delete your account from the app

Open the Seldeo app on a device where you're signed in.
Go to Settings → Account → Delete account.
Read the confirmation screen. It lists what will be deleted, what will be retained, and the deletion date.
Confirm with your passkey.
Choose one of two options:
- Schedule delete in 30 days (default and recommended) — deletion happens on day 31. Until then you can cancel by signing in on any paired device.
- Delete now — the request goes to our deletion pipeline within one business day. This option is irreversible; there is no cancel path once you confirm.

The confirmation ends with a green Deletion scheduled banner and a plain-language summary of the date the deletion will land.

Delete your account by email

If you can't reach the app — you've lost every paired device or the account has been locked — you can request deletion by email:

Write to privacy@seldeo.com from the address on your account.
Include your Seldeo username or handle.
One sentence explaining that you want to delete the account.

We reply within one business day with a confirmation link that starts the same 30-day countdown as the in-app path.

If you're deleting the account of a deceased person, use the memorialisation flow described in Memorialising an account instead. Deleting the account outright erases the person's material entirely, which is often not what surviving family want.

What happens to your data

Within thirty days of your scheduled deletion date:

Profile, posts, stories, and reels — permanently deleted from primary and secondary storage.
Comments and reactions on other people's content — removed. The other person's post stays; your interactions are cleared.
Direct messages you sent — removed from our transport records. Copies delivered to other people's paired devices remain, because we have no way to reach into another user's device to erase content they've received. Ask them individually if you want your messages removed.
Group-chat messages you sent — replaced with "This message was deleted" for the other participants.
Voice and video call records — the call metadata (who, when, duration) is deleted from your call history. The fact that a call happened remains in the other party's call log. No call audio or video is ever recorded on our servers.
Music-on-reels attributions — the reel's music attribution row is deleted with the reel.
Circles — Circle names, memberships, and per-Circle audience history are permanently deleted.
Cloud backups of your data — permanently deleted within 45 days.
Advertising identifiers — the association between your account and any advertising identifier is destroyed server-side.
Authentication record — the underlying authentication record is deleted.

The last piece — the authentication record — is the reason you can create a new Seldeo account with the same email or phone number 90 days after your deletion is complete.

What we keep after deletion

A hashed reference to the deleted account ID. So we can detect and prevent the trivial "delete and re-create" abuse pattern.
A boolean ban record, if the account was terminated for a Community Guidelines violation. Content itself is deleted; the record is a boolean plus a category.
Aggregated, anonymised usage statistics that don't identify you.
Financial and legal records, only in the narrow cases where the account was party to a monetized relationship or a law-enforcement matter. These are retained for the statutorily required period, then deleted.

Nothing else survives.

Cancel a scheduled deletion

If you scheduled a 30-day deletion and want to cancel:

Open the app on any paired device.
Sign in with your normal credentials.
Cancellation is automatic; you'll see a "Welcome back — deletion cancelled" banner.

You can also cancel by email — write to privacy@seldeo.com from the address on file and ask for cancellation. We reply within one business day.

Download your data before deleting

We strongly recommend generating a data export before you delete. See the related Data portability news post for what's in an export, and Settings → Privacy → Download your data for the export button. Wait for the export ZIP to land in your email before proceeding with deletion; once the deletion window closes, no export can be created.

After deletion

Your username or handle is not immediately released for re-use. There is a cooldown of at least 90 days before another account can claim it.
You can create a new Seldeo account with the same email or phone number after 90 days. If you sign up sooner, you can use a different email/phone during that window and change it later.
Old share links to your deleted content resolve to a "This content is no longer available" page.

Deleting on someone else's behalf

If you have legal authority over another person's account (executor of an estate, court-appointed guardian, etc.), the right path depends on the situation:

Death. Use the memorial flow, not the delete flow.
Guardianship. Email privacy@seldeo.com with a scanned copy of the guardianship order and the account handle. We verify the order before acting.
Under-13 accounts. A parent or legal guardian may request deletion by email at privacy@seldeo.com; see our Privacy Policy for the specifics.