Delete your Echo account

In short

• You delete your account inside the Echo app: Settings → Account → Delete account. It takes about a minute and is permanent.
• There is no website form or dashboard that deletes an Echo account, because an Echo account has no email address, phone number or password that a website could check. The section If you can't use the app explains what you can do instead.
• Deleting your account removes your profile, Echo Key, contacts, family and group memberships, recovery backup and subscription record from our servers. Messages you already sent stay in the other person's app. The full list is below.

How to delete your account in the app

Open Echo on the phone where you are signed in, then:

1. Go to Settings → Account → Delete account.
2. Read the explanation screen. It tells you this is permanent and shows the "what goes / what stays / what we can't do" lists below before you continue.
3. If you have an active Pro or Family subscription, Echo takes you to cancel it first (see Subscriptions). Echo can't cancel a subscription for you, so it won't delete an account that is still being billed.
4. Type your display name to confirm. Not a code word: the name you chose, because that is the thing being erased. The button stays disabled until it matches exactly.
5. Tap Delete my account. You see a 10-second countdown with an Undo button. Nothing is sent to our servers during those 10 seconds; tapping Undo cancels the whole thing.
6. If you don't tap Undo, deletion runs. It normally finishes in a few seconds. You will see "Your account is gone." Close Echo completely and reopen it; it starts fresh, as a new install.

There is no cool-down afterwards and no way to undo it once those 10 seconds pass. Echo has no email address to reach you at, so a grace period it couldn't tell you about would not be one you could use.

What is deleted

The app shows you this list before you confirm:

• Your profile, display name and Echo Key
• Your contacts, from your list and from theirs
• Friend requests, both directions
• Your family and group memberships
• Your recovery code and PIN (the recovery backup we hold)
• Every device signed in

In full, that also includes: any nicknames you gave contacts and any they gave you; blocks you set and blocks set against you; your parental-control settings and family seats if you held any; calendar events you created and your responses; your reactions (in one-on-one chats, reduced to an empty marker so the chat stays in order; in families and groups, removed); your subscription entitlement record; your push notification handles; your last-active day; your permission for Echo Support to contact you; your friend-request daily counter; any Chamber presence notes; and your 13-or-older confirmation.

What stays, and why

• Messages you already sent stay in the other person's app. Their copy is already on their phone, and we can't reach into someone else's phone to take it back. Our servers also keep the encrypted copies that make up the other person's side of the conversation, so their chat does not break, together with the record that your former account took part in it. That identifier is no longer linked to a name.
• Rooms you were in. A family space or group belongs to everyone in it. Leaving doesn't close it for the others.
• Disappearing-message timers you set keep running, so a message you sent with a timer still disappears on the other side on schedule.
• Any report made about you or by you, kept separately for 12 months (longer for child-safety reports or an open legal matter) so it survives after the account is gone.
• Billing records we are required to keep. Your subscription entitlement is deleted, but the log of payment events is a financial record we hold under legal obligation, and it keeps your former account identifier.
• Feedback you sent, without your Echo Key.
• Copies outside our live service: a small number of recent server snapshots, replaced as we update the service, and copies the underlying network may hold that we cannot reach. What such a copy holds of your messages is encrypted. Apple, Google and our service providers keep their own records (purchase records, notification tokens, operational logs) under their own rules.

Echo shows no "this person left" label anywhere, on purpose: from the outside, a deleted account looks the same as a block or a contact that was never made.

Our Privacy Policy §17 and §18 set out the deletion and retention rules in full.

Subscriptions

If you have an active Echo Pro or Echo Family subscription, Echo will not delete your account until it is cancelled, because you would have no account left to manage the billing from, and Echo cannot cancel a store subscription for you.

• iPhone (Apple): cancel in your Apple ID's subscription settings. Echo's screen takes you there. Then come back and tap "I've cancelled — check again".
• Android (Google Play): cancel in Google Play's subscriptions. Then come back and check again.

Cancelling does not refund the current period, and deleting your account doesn't either. Refunds are handled by the store (Terms §6).

Child accounts

Only the account holder can delete an account. A teen with a Child account deletes it the same way, from inside the app. A parent or family Admin cannot delete a teen's account for them; an Admin can remove the teen from the Family, which ends their place in it but leaves their Echo account in place.

If you can't use the app

Echo has no web form for deletion, because there is nothing a website could check: an Echo account has no email address, phone number or password, and your Echo Key is public, not a secret. That design is what stops anyone else from deleting, or getting into, your account. It also means we can only act on a deletion request once we can reasonably confirm it comes from the account holder. Here is what you can do, in order:

1. If you still have your recovery code and PIN, or your recovery phrase: install Echo on any phone, restore your account with them, then delete it from Settings as described above. This is the one way to prove an account is yours, and it works even if you have lost the original phone.
2. If you have lost the phone, the recovery code and the PIN: email privacy@echomessenger.app with the subject "Account deletion request" and the Echo Key of the account. We will reply within 45 days. We will tell you honestly what we can do: with no way to verify that the account is yours from outside the app, we will not delete an account on an unverified request, because that would let anyone delete anyone's account. We can tell you what readable information an abandoned account holds (a display name, an Echo Key, contacts and memberships, and timing; never message content), and your messages stay encrypted and unread by us whether or not the account is ever deleted.
3. Postal mail: Controverse Labs LLC, 68 Harrison Ave, Ste 605 PMB 231072, Boston, MA 02111, USA.

You can also ask us, at the same address, for a copy of the readable data we hold about an account, or to correct your display name. Our Privacy Policy §16 explains your rights and how we verify requests. Never send us your PIN or recovery code.

Questions

Support: support@echomessenger.app. Privacy: privacy@echomessenger.app. See also the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service.