No, the title of this post isn't clickbait. We are indeed celebrating account deletions. It was one year ago on the 7th of October 2021 when we released our account deletion feature that allowed our customers to completely erase their accounts and all associated data from our service.

And it's also just over a year since we added automatic account deleting which is where we schedule the deletion of unused accounts after a year of inactivity (with a notification email sent to the account owner of course).

Since then we've had 38 users choose to erase their accounts themselves and we've conducted 8,083 automated deletions for inactive accounts (created between 2017-2022). The total number is staggering and shows the scale of the privacy burden we all face when we signup for services. There are entities out there that will never delete your account for you even when it's clear you're no longer using their service and we think that's just wrong.

When it comes to our automated deletions, we send our customers an email after a year of no activity to let them know we'll be erasing their account but if they need our services in the future they can just signup again, even with the same email address as we don't have it stored anymore once we erase their account.

So why aren't more companies performing automated deletions of abandoned accounts? Well.. as you are probably assuming, customer data is a very lucrative "product" and many companies are looking to increase their revenue by either remarketing to prior customers (sending you emails with advertisements for products and services) or selling your personal information to a broker who will then bundle your information up with many other individuals to be sold to yet more entities.

We don't think that's morally right, which is why our privacy policy is so clear about where your data is stored and who has access to it. We're not dealing in mile-long policies that only lawyers can understand. And it's also why we take an active role in minimising how much of your data is available to us, when it's clear you aren't using our services we delete your data, it's as simple as that.

If you would like to learn more about how we're treating our customers like human beings please take a look at our recent 200th blogpost which was all about dark patterns in software design and how we shy away from those deceitful practices.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend.