Delete your Owesum account
This page explains how to delete your Owesum account and exactly what happens to your data. There are two ways to do it: inside the app, or by emailing us if you have already uninstalled it.
If you still have the app
- Open Owesum.
- Open Settings from the menu in the top right of the Groups screen.
- Scroll to Danger zone.
- Tap Delete account and confirm.
It takes effect immediately. You do not need to contact us and you do not need to be signed in.
If you have already uninstalled the app
Email us and we will delete the account for you. Please send the request from the email address on the account, or tell us the username shown in Settings, so we can identify it.
We reply to every request and delete the account within 30 days, usually within a few days.
What is deleted
- Your name, and your username, which is released for someone else to use.
- Your sign-in. The account can no longer be signed into by any method.
- Your email address, which is freed so it can be registered again later.
- Reminders you have sent or received.
- Any feedback you sent us from inside the app.
All of this is permanent. There is no undo and no recovery period.
What stays, and why
Expenses you paid for, your share of other people's expenses, and repayments you recorded remain in the groups they belong to. They are no longer connected to you: your name is replaced with "Deleted user" and nothing in them identifies you.
This is deliberate, and it is about other people rather than about us. Owesum works out who owes whom by adding up everyone's shares. If your share of a dinner disappeared, the amounts every other person in that group is shown as owing would silently change, and their record of a trip would rewrite itself. So the figures stay and the identity goes.
How long the remaining records are kept
The anonymised expense records stay for as long as the group they belong to exists, because they are part of other members' records rather than yours. Owesum currently has no way to delete a group, so in practice those records are kept indefinitely.
They carry no name, no email address, and nothing else that identifies you. What remains is an amount, a date and a description, attached to "Deleted user".
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you want to check a deletion went through, email sunnyday130826@gmail.com.