Data Retention & Deletion Policy

• Effective Date: 2026-08-28

This policy explains our data retention practices and provides a transparent matrix of exactly what happens to your data when you request account deletion.

1. General Retention Practices

Pawgloo™ currently does not have a published, fixed retention period for active account, profile, media, location, chat, booking, or analytics data. We retain this information for as long as your account is active and the data is necessary to operate the service. Authorized third-party processors (such as our authorized payment gateway, our communication partner, and our analytics provider) apply their own privacy terms and retention limits to the data they process.

2. The Account Deletion Process

When you initiate an account deletion through the app, the system begins an automated purge.

Important Note on Grace Periods:

• Live Behavior: An account deletion request executes immediately with no grace period. You cannot restore the account after the request succeeds.
• Planned Behavior: We intend to introduce a 14-day deactivation grace period during which you can cancel the deletion by logging back in. This is not yet active.

3. Data Deletion Matrix (Live Implementation)

Our current automated deletion handler (the automated deletion handler) processes your data as follows upon request:

A. Data Immediately Deleted

The following records are permanently expunged or hard-deleted immediately:

• Core Identity: Your main your primary profile record record and primary user authentication record.
• Pet Data: Your dogs’ profiles (swiped profiles record, interaction records), stats, and preferences.
• Location: Your active your location record record.
• Matchmaking: Your swipes, matches, recommendations, and connections.
• Media: Your profile pictures and your dogs’ imagery stored in secure cloud storage (the entire user prefix is deleted).
• In-House Chat: Legacy our secure database conversation participation and messages.
• Moderation: Your blocking records (users you have blocked).
• Notifications: Your push notification device tokens.

B. Data Currently Retained (Omissions)

Due to current system architecture and third-party integrations, the handler does not currently delete the following records:

• Communications (Third-Party): Chat messages, chat media, and user identity data stored on our communication partner servers.
• Financial & Bookings: Booking records, payment histories, and ledger entries (these are subject to legal holds).
• Trust & Safety: Submitted submitted reports of abuse (unlike blocking records, reports are retained for safety audits).
• Community: Ratings you have left for partners or received.
• System & Analytics: Active sessions, secondary our secure authentication provider records, our temporary cache system behavior/ranking caches, and telemetry in our analytics provider/our error monitoring partner.
• Cache & Support: Temporary support tickets and cached data.

C. Planned Complete Purge (Not Live)

In the future, the automated system will be upgraded to systematically signal all sub-processors (our communication partner, our temporary cache system, our secure authentication provider) to perform comprehensive hard deletes of all associated transient and communication data upon account closure.

4. Mandatory Holds and Retained Data

Regardless of system upgrades, certain data cannot be deleted due to legal, financial, or safety obligations:

• Financial and Tax Laws: Under Indian financial regulations (including the Income Tax Act and PMLA), numeric transaction logs, invoices, and our payment processor ledger references must be retained for a proposed duration of eight (8) years (pending legal approval) for audit purposes.
• Pseudonymization: Retained financial records are irreversibly decoupled from your direct identity (name and exact location) to protect your privacy while maintaining ledger integrity.
• Trust & Safety Holds: If an account is suspended for severe Terms of Service violations, involved in an active financial dispute, or part of a legal investigation, a cryptographic hash of the device ID and relevant (like submitted submitted reports) are proposed to be retained permanently (pending legal and product approval) to prevent fraudulent re-registration and cooperate with law enforcement.
• Other User Interests: Messages you sent to other users (retained on our communication partner) or ratings you submitted may remain visible to the recipient, as deleting them would negatively impact the other user’s experience and historical records.

5. Your Rights and Next Steps

• Steps to Delete: For step-by-step instructions on triggering this process in the app, see our Account Deletion Guide.
• Rights: Under the DPDP Act, you have the right to request erasure. If you require manual deletion of records currently retained by third-party processors (like our communication partner), please contact support.
• Provider Terms: For data processed by our financial gateway, please refer to the our payment processor Privacy Policy.

If you have questions regarding this matrix or need assistance exercising your rights, contact our Data Protection Officer at privacy@pawgloo.com.