Delete your The Vow account

What deletion means

Deleting your account permanently closes it and starts deletion of associated personal data. It is not the same as pausing discovery, signing out, or hiding a profile.

How to request deletion

1. If you can sign in on web or mobile, open Profile, then Privacy, then choose Delete account. This is the fastest and safest path because your session verifies account ownership.
2. If you cannot sign in, use the public Contact page and choose a privacy or account-deletion request. We ask only for proportionate evidence needed to verify ownership. Never send a password or verification code.
3. Before confirming, download your data if you want a copy. The confirmation screen explains any active or pending Focused Match, the neutral closure shown to the other person, and the effect on available, reserved, or consumed connection credits.

What happens after confirmation

1. Stop new matching and freeze new account writes immediately. Application and database access is denied even if a previously issued access-token JWT has not yet expired; deleting the authentication identity then prevents future session renewal.
2. Close or neutralise pending and active match state safely without exposing your reason, and release any unconsumed credit reservations transactionally.
3. Delete the authentication identity, direct profile details, photos, selfies, optional survey answers, and other account-only content from active systems according to the reviewed data inventory.
4. De-identify or access-restrict shared match timelines and communications when immediate deletion would impair another person’s rights, a safety investigation, fraud prevention, a legal claim, or another documented legal obligation. They are never returned to discovery, matching, or marketing use.
5. Revoke live video rooms and request or verify cleanup by relevant providers.
6. Send a completion notice and expire encrypted backup copies within the approved backup window.

Narrowly limited retention

We may retain only information necessary for a legal obligation, payment or accounting record, fraud or safety investigation, legal claim, or documented legal hold. Retained records are minimised, access-restricted, excluded from matching and marketing, assigned a reason and expiry, and deleted when that reason ends.

The Privacy Policy lists the approved categories and periods. A frozen or anonymised profile alone is not treated as completed deletion. If a category cannot yet be deleted, we explain the legal reason and expected period without exposing another person’s private data.

Status and help

The in-app privacy area confirms a request when you submit it and gives you its reference. If you change your mind before a request completes, or want to know where it has got to, write to the privacy address in the operator block quoting that reference.

We complete a deletion request within one month of receiving it. If a request is unusually complex we may extend that by up to two further months, and we will tell you within the first month that we have done so and why. Where a copy of deleted data persists in an encrypted database backup, it is not returned to the live service and expires with that backup on its normal cycle.

If you cannot access the account or believe a request has stalled, use the public Contact page.