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Delete your account

You delete your account directly inside the app, on your own. This page explains every step before you take it.

This is a courtesy translation: if the two versions differ, the original Italian text prevails. Read the original

How to do it

There’s no need to write to us: Hidesay deletes your account right away, inside the app, without going through us.

  1. Open the ☰ menu in the chat list and tap Access and security.
  2. At the bottom, in the Account section, tap Delete account.
  3. Choose what happens to the messages you sent (see below): there’s no default, you have to make the choice.
  4. Confirm with your full access token, the one you find in Settings → Account token. The session open on this phone isn’t enough on its own, on purpose: it’s how we stop someone who simply found your phone unlocked from closing your account.
  5. If you have a second factor turned on (authenticator app, additional password or code by email), the app asks for it at this point. Recovery codes aren’t accepted here: they’re meant for getting back into an account, not for closing it.
  6. Two final confirmation screens, then the deletion starts instantly.

If you get the token or the code wrong too many times, the app blocks new attempts for a few minutes: it’s a protection against someone guessing, not an error in the app.

The choice about the messages you sent

Hidesay asks you what to do with the messages you have already sent, because the two paths are not equivalent.

  • Delete them too. Everything you wrote disappears from private chats, groups and channels. The people you wrote to also lose their half of the conversation: a private chat is made of two people, and it can’t stand with just one.
  • Leave them with the people who received them. The messages stay where they are and remain readable by those who received them. In exchange, your account doesn’t become a closed but empty account: it becomes anonymous. Name, username, bio, photo, public key, token and second factor are erased forever and replaced by a random identifier that doesn’t lead to you. Anyone who reads those messages will see "Deleted account" in place of your name, and you won’t be able to get back into that account in any way: with no profile, no valid token and no key, there’s nothing left to access it with.

In both cases, your profile, your username and your public key stop existing at the same instant.

Groups and channels

If you own groups or channels, deleting your account also deletes them for all the other members, regardless of what you chose for your messages: they’re yours, and they don’t pass to anyone else. Before going ahead, consider whether you want to transfer ownership to someone else from the group settings.

In groups and channels where you are simply a member, on the other hand, deleting your account is the same as leaving: the group stays up for those who remain.

What is removed from our servers

  • your profile: name, username, bio, photo and cover image;
  • your public PGP key and its fingerprint;
  • every active session, on every device, this one included;
  • your access token and, if turned on, two-step verification;
  • the tokens used for push notifications;
  • your account settings, folders, blocks and uploaded stickers;
  • the groups and channels you own, with all their content;
  • the messages you wrote, unless you chose to leave them with the people who received them.

What we can’t delete

Copies of messages already downloaded to other participants’ devices stay on those devices: we have no access to other people’s devices, so we can’t recall them or delete them remotely.

If you’ve lost access to your account

Deletion requires your full access token, and your second factor too if you have one turned on. It’s a deliberate choice, the same one that prevents us from helping you recover a lost account (we explain this in the terms of service): we keep no copy of your token and no way to verify that the account is yours without it. If you have lost it together with the second factor, we have no technical way to authenticate a deletion request on your behalf, and so we can’t carry it out, not even on a written request.

It’s immediate and there’s no going back

There’s no cooling-off period and no backup of ours to put you back on your feet: the token stops working the instant you confirm, and the deletion from the database happens within the same request, not later.

Questions about how it works before you go ahead? Write to us at [email protected]. More details about how data is processed in the Privacy policy.