Deleting your Depesha account

How to delete your account

You delete your Depesha messenger account in the app itself — on Android, in the web version or in the desktop app. Doing it on one device is enough:

1. Open Depesha and sign in to the account you want to delete.
2. Go to Settings → Account.
3. Tap Delete account at the bottom of the page.
4. Confirm the deletion (on Android the button says “Delete in 7 days”).

The account is deleted 7 days after the request; the date is shown in Settings → Account. To change your mind, log out and sign in again with an SMS code before that date — the deletion is cancelled. The desktop app logs you out right after the request.

If moderators have temporarily restricted the account and signing in is blocked, you can delete it once the restriction ends.

If you don’t have the app

You don’t need to install the app: open the Depesha web version, sign in with the account’s phone number and an SMS code, and follow the steps above.

An account can only be deleted from within the account, with the Delete account button; accounts are not deleted on request by e-mail or through support.

What is deleted

7 days after the request:

• your profile: name, bio, profile photo and username; the phone number is erased from the account, and the account number no longer finds it;
• your feed posts, replies and reposts, likes, follows, close friends, hidden words and sources, your custom feeds;
• your contacts, including those found through your phone book;
• all sessions on all devices are ended; device and session records (with IP addresses and approximate location), push-notification tokens and notification delivery records are deleted;
• secret chats are closed; encrypted messages and files not yet delivered, and secret-chat keys, are deleted from the server;
• your settings, chat folders and block list;
• your data-export archives;
• your profile photo and post files are removed from file storage once nothing refers to them.

What is kept, and for how long

• Messages you sent to private chats, groups and channels, and their attachments, stay with the other members, shown as from a “Deleted account”, until chat members or admins delete them. To avoid that, delete them before deleting the account (see below). Earlier versions of edited messages are currently kept even after deletion.
• Groups and channels you own are not deleted: they pass to the admin who has been an admin the longest. If there is no admin, the chat stays without an owner — group members keep chatting under the group’s rules, and a channel stays readable but nobody can post in it any more. To delete a group or channel entirely, do it before deleting the account — see below.
• If other people added you to their contacts or blocked you, those entries stay in their lists, shown as “Deleted account”.
• Database backups — up to 3 months; deleted data leaves them as the backups age out. Encrypted secret-chat messages are not included in backups.
• If your messages or posts were reported: copies of the reported content — 180 days after the decision (longer while a restriction from that report is in force); the reports themselves and the moderation history are currently kept without a time limit.
• The admin action log (who did what and when, no message content) — at least 2 years.
• Server technical logs (no message text, codes or full phone numbers) — 30 days.
• A service record of the deleted account without name or phone number: internal identifier, account number (never given to anyone else) and dates.

Deleting some data without deleting the account

• A message: open its menu and choose Delete. Without the “Also delete for…” tick (“Delete for all members” in a group) it disappears for you only. With it, the message is deleted for everyone — possible for your own messages within 48 hours of sending, and for group admins on any message in the group: the text and attachments are erased from the server and a “deleted” marker remains.
• A chat: Clear history or Delete chat removes the conversation for you. In a private chat you can clear the history for both — it disappears for you and the other person, but the messages are currently kept on the server; to erase them from the server, delete the messages for everyone.
• Groups and channels: you can leave them; the owner can delete a group or channel for all members — with all its messages.
• Feed: delete a post, reply or repost from its menu, unlike, unfollow people, remove people from close friends; hidden words and custom feeds are deleted in the feed settings.
• Profile: in Settings → Account you can remove your profile photo, bio and username.
• Contacts: remove a person from your contacts, including one found through your phone book. Phone-book numbers that don’t match a Depesha account are not stored.
• Devices: in Settings → Devices end a single session or all other sessions; logging out of a device deletes its push token.
• Secret chats (Android and desktop): delete the chat — messages and files not yet delivered are deleted from the server.
• Chat folders are deleted in the folder settings; a scheduled message can be cancelled (the cancelled record is kept for 30 days).

To see what data about you is stored, download the archive: Settings → Account → Export my data (on desktop: Data and storage).

More

How we store and protect data: the Privacy policy. Contact us: irshat653@gmail.com.