Have you ever panicked and deleted something, then immediately regretted it? Maybe you were frustrated with a service, or worried about privacy, or just having a bad day. You hit 'Delete Account,' felt a moment of satisfaction, and then realized: all your data, all your history, all your carefully tracked budgets — gone forever.
Most apps don't care. They either delete instantly (and blame you for the irreversible action) or worse — they don't actually delete anything, just hide it from your view. We think both approaches are wrong.
The 7-Day Grace Period
When you request account deletion in Simple Money Tracker, we don't wipe your data immediately. Instead, we mark your account for deletion and start a 7-day countdown. During that week, you can log back in at any time and restore your account — exactly as it was, no data lost, no settings reset.
This isn't a dark pattern to keep you hooked. It's a safety net. We've seen users request deletion because they were confused about a feature, or because they thought they needed to 'start fresh' to fix a sync issue. The grace period gives them time to cool off, reach out for help, or simply change their mind.
What Actually Gets Deleted
After the 7-day period expires, a scheduled Cloud Function runs daily at 2:00 AM UTC to perform comprehensive cleanup. And we mean comprehensive. Every subcollection — expenses, budgets, debts, lendings, goals, subscriptions, investments, contacts, notes, emotion notes, notifications, FCM tokens, messages, simple storage, linked storage — is permanently removed.
We also clean up your inbox, group memberships, Telegram bot data, notification jobs, reviews, feedback, suggestions, and Firebase Storage files. Finally, the Firebase Auth user record itself is deleted. We even maintain an audit log in our admin collection so we can prove deletion occurred if ever questioned.
Why Not Instant Deletion?
Because instant deletion is irreversible, and irreversible actions should require irreversible intent. A 7-day window is short enough to not be burdensome, but long enough to catch impulsive decisions and accidental requests. It's the same reason email services have 'undo send' — not because you shouldn't be able to send emails, but because everyone makes mistakes.
We also believe this aligns with GDPR's 'right to erasure' in spirit, not just letter. True data protection means giving users control — including control to change their minds.
Your Data, Your Timeline
The soft delete feature launched in version 4.7.0 alongside a complete Cloud Function cleanup pipeline. It uses composite Firestore indexes for cost-optimized queries and recursive deletion for efficient server-side cleanup. But those are implementation details.
What matters is this: when you decide to leave Simple Money Tracker, we respect your decision completely. We just want to make sure it's really what you want. Because goodbyes should be intentional.
