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Your data and privacy

Deleting your identity

How to delete your identity data, exactly what gets removed on what timeline, and the honest limits of deletion on a blockchain.

Last updated 20 July 2026

You can leave. Deleting your identity removes your biometric data, your documents and your verified claims from active systems, on a published timeline. This article explains the process honestly — including the parts that are genuinely hard on a blockchain.

How to request deletion

  • In the wallet app: use the delete-my-data function, or close your account (closure triggers the deletion schedule).
  • By email: send a request to dpo@virtengine.com. For biometric data specifically, use the subject “Withdraw Biometric Consent”.

The deletion timeline

  • Within 30 days: data is deleted from active systems.
  • Within the backup rotation period (typically 90 days): data ages out of backups.
  • Encryption keys are destroyed — this is what makes deletion work for on-chain material.

The blockchain question, answered honestly

Records written to a blockchain cannot be erased — that permanence is what makes the network trustworthy. So the system never writes your personal data to the chain in readable form. What exists on-chain is encrypted references and verification results.

Deletion destroys the encryption keys. The encrypted material remains on-chain forever, but it is permanently unreadable — cryptographically equivalent to shredded. What can never be removed is the bare public record that an address once held verified scopes.

Some data has legally mandated retention: identity documents fall under 7-year know-your-customer rules, and biometric data may be retained up to 3 years after account closure to prevent fraudulent re-registration. These clocks run regardless of deletion requests; destruction is automatic when they expire.

What deletion means for services you used

Services keep the historical answers they lawfully received while your consent was active (for example, that you passed an age check in March). They lose all ability to request anything new. Your verification level ceases to exist, and re-joining later means verifying from the start — deletion is real, so there is no dormant profile to reactivate.