How do I delete my account?

• For new users/users who have no active goals
• For longer-term users with active goals
• What data do you retain, if any?

For new users/users who have no active goals:

If your Beeminder account was created less than 7 days ago or doesn't have any goals, you can delete your account immediately in the Delete Account section of your account settings. It's as simple as clicking a button!

For longer-term users with active goals

You need to contact support to delete your account. We include this step to intentionally make it a little more difficult to quit everything entirely and immediately. The whole point of Beeminder is to get you to stick to your goals, after all! Deleting your account is the exact opposite of that, and it would undermine the commitment contract for us to make it too easy.

In that case, this is what you'll see:

Having to email us adds a little bit of friction and time delay, which gives an opportunity for your long-term thinking to kick in and shout "wait, no!" if deleting your account is actually counterproductive for you. (And yes! That is something that has happened multiple times!)

That said, we never refuse to delete an account, though we might remind you of other options like taking breaks and archiving your goals if it sounds like you'd like to keep using Beeminder and are just not sure about something.

The way the process works is that when you first email us, the support team send a confirmation email to you, asking you to reply to it in order to confirm. This makes sure you're the person making the request by checking that you receive and can reply to our email.

While we wait for the confirmation, we'll ensure you're not going to be charged again if we can help it: we archive your goals and remove any subscription. You could still charge yourself via IFTTT or our API until your account has actually been deleted, though -- make sure you turn off any such scripts and applets!

Once we've received your confirmation, we'll go ahead and delete your account, and confirm to you that that has been done. Your account and goals, including archived goals and details on deleted goals, are deleted immediately and cannot be retrieved. Once your account is deleted, we can no longer charge you.

What data do you retain, if any?

We indefinitely retain data on your past payments (i.e. details like amounts and dates) in our payment processor, and copies of your emails to the support team (if any). This gives us access to that information in case of any disputes. We do not hold your payment information on our servers, and are not able to charge you after your account is deleted. 

Some information about your account and goals may still exist in backups for a short time. 

Important note: Your Beeminder account and the account you have on our Discourse-based forum are two different accounts, so each one needs to be deleted separately. If you've never logged into the forum, then you likely don't have a forum account (many members don't). Unless you let us know you have a forum account which you also want deleted, we don't have a way to see that one exists, so if you did have a forum account and you want that to be deleted as well, please let us know when you contact us about deleting your Beeminder account.

Keywords: unsubscribe, account deletion, breaking up with Beeminder