You can delete your Parda account and everything in it, yourself, at any time. This page says exactly what happens when you do, because in this category a vague answer is not good enough.
Account → Delete account. Two clicks and a password. No waiting period, no email negotiation, no retention window during which we try to win you back, and no charge — Ashley Madison once charged a fee for full deletion and the 2015 breach showed the data had not gone. We do not charge, and it goes.
Three options, and the difference between them
1. Hide your profile
Your profile stops appearing in browse, search and results. You keep your account, your messages and your credits, and you can still log in. Nothing is deleted. Use this when you want to step away for a while.
2. Delete your messages
You can permanently delete any conversation from your own account at any time. This removes it from our database, not merely from your view. It cannot remove a copy the other person has already screenshotted — no platform on earth can do that, which is why your real name is not on this one.
3. Delete your account
Everything goes. Details below.
What is deleted, and when
| Data | When |
|---|---|
| Profile, bio, preferences | Immediately |
| Photographs and their masked copies | Immediately, removed from disk |
| Messages you sent and received | Immediately |
| Identity document and selfie | Immediately, if not already deleted after review |
| Email address and password hash | Immediately |
| Favourites, views, reports you filed | Immediately |
| Backups containing your data | Within 30 days, as backups rotate out |
| Technical logs | Within 90 days |
What is kept, and why
Three things survive deletion, and we would rather name them than let you discover them:
- Payment records. Transaction reference, amount, date and status, for 8 years, because Indian tax law requires it. Your name is removed where the law allows. These records do not include what you bought in any descriptive form.
- A one-way hash of your identity document number, so that an account removed for a serious breach cannot immediately return. This cannot be reversed into the number and is not personal data in any usable sense. If you deleted voluntarily rather than being removed, tell the Grievance Officer and we will purge it.
- Records under a preservation order. If a lawful authority has required us to preserve a specific account, deletion of that account is suspended. See Law Enforcement Requests. We will tell you unless prohibited.
What deletion cannot do
Honestly stated:
- It cannot retrieve a message somebody screenshotted, or a photograph somebody saved. This is true of every platform and is the reason ours masks photos by default and holds no real names.
- It cannot remove your data from a third party you shared it with yourself.
- It cannot undo a charge. Unused credits are not refunded on voluntary deletion — see the Refund Policy.
Take your data with you first
Before deleting, you can download everything we hold about you as a JSON file from your account screen. It is instant, there is no request to file, and nobody reviews it.
Deleting without logging in
If you cannot access your account — a lost password on an email you no longer control, for example — write to the Grievance Officer through the grievance page. We will verify you by a means that does not require you to prove anything about your personal life, and complete the deletion within the statutory timeline.
If somebody has died
A nominee appointed under Section 14 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 may exercise these rights on a member’s behalf. You can appoint one by writing to the Grievance Officer. We handle these requests with discretion, and we do not disclose the contents of an account to a family member — only close it.