Delete Your Account

How to permanently delete your Gistvox account and all data associated with it.

Account deletion is immediate and cannot be undone.

There is no grace period or recovery option. Once your request is processed, your account and all associated content are removed permanently and cannot be restored.

1. How to request deletion

You can request deletion of your Gistvox account in either of two ways:

Option A — In-app (preferred)

Open the Gistvox app on your phone or sign in at gistvox.com.
Go to Profile → Settings → Delete Account.
Confirm deletion. Your account is removed immediately.

Option B — By email

If you can't access the app (uninstalled, locked out, etc.), email us with the subject line below from the email address associated with your account so we can verify ownership.

a@gistvox.com

Suggested subject: Delete Account: @yourhandle

2. What gets deleted

The following is permanently removed from our active database the moment your deletion request is processed:

Account & profile: handle, email address, display name, avatar reference, cover image reference, bio, location, website link, language preference, and notification settings.
Audio content: the database records for all your audio posts, recordings, and transcripts. (See Section 3 for what happens to the underlying audio files in our storage backend.)
Engagement you created: comments, replies, likes, and shares you made on other users' content.
Social graph: your follower and following relationships.
Messages: direct messages and voice replies, both sent and received.
Activity: listen history, notifications, challenge participation, and any content reports you filed.

Your username (handle) is released back into the available pool and may be claimed by another user after deletion.

3. What we retain (and why)

Some information is retained after deletion for specific legal, financial, operational, and platform-integrity reasons:

Deletion feedback record: your handle at time of deletion, the email address on the account at time of deletion, and any reason or feedback you optionally provided. Used to improve the service and identify abuse patterns. Not used to contact you and not shared with third parties.
Payment and transaction records: if you made purchases (Pro subscription, Founder plan, recording credits), the underlying records are retained with our payments provider as required by tax and financial-record laws (typically up to 7 years depending on jurisdiction).
Audio & image files in object storage: the database references to your audio recordings, avatar, and cover image are deleted immediately, but the underlying binary files may persist in our cloud storage backend for up to 30 days under standard lifecycle retention. They are no longer publicly discoverable through your account once your profile row is deleted.
Engagement on your content created by others: likes, comments, replies, and shares that other users created on your posts may remain in the system as orphaned records (the link to your identity is removed) until normal backup retention expires.
Platform-integrity records: block relationships, group memberships, and saves you made on other users' content may persist as orphaned rows so platform features (blocking enforcement, group contribution attribution, etc.) continue to work correctly for other users. These rows contain no personal information beyond what is already stored in your deletion feedback record.
Server backups: our database provider maintains rolling backups for disaster recovery. Your data may appear in these backups for up to 30 days following the standard cloud-provider retention window, after which the backups expire and your data is unrecoverable from them.

4. Processing time

In-app deletion is immediate. The moment you confirm deletion in the app, your account and all associated data are removed in a single database transaction. There is no scheduled job, no overnight batch, no review queue.

Email-requested deletion is typically processed within 72 hours of receipt. We verify the request is from the account owner before processing. The deletion itself remains immediate; only the verification step is human-paced.

5. Questions

For questions about account deletion or your data, email a@gistvox.com. For broader information on how we handle your data, see our Terms & Privacy Policy.

Terms & Privacy Contact