Delete Your Account

Last updated: August 8, 2026

You can delete your Vaylume account and personal data at any time, without asking us and without giving a reason. There are two routes: do it yourself in the app, or email us. Both end in the same place.

1. Delete it yourself, in the app

This is the fastest route — it takes effect immediately.

1. Open Vaylume and go to your Profile tab.
2. Tap the settings (gear) icon in the top corner.
3. Scroll to Delete Account (in red, near the bottom).
4. Read the confirmation, then tap Delete Permanently.

Your login is destroyed at that moment and you are signed out. There is no waiting period and no "cooling-off" window during which we quietly keep the account alive.

Want a copy of your data first? Deletion is irreversible, so export before you delete, not after. The same settings screen has an Export My Data action that produces a machine-readable copy of your account (your right to data portability under Article 20 GDPR).

2. Ask us to delete it, by email

Use this if you have lost access to the app or to your account.

Email support@vaylume.app with the subject "Account deletion request", from the email address your Vaylume account uses. That last part matters — it is how we know the request is really yours, and it means we do not have to ask you for identity documents.

If you cannot send from that address, write to us anyway and say so. We will ask you for something else that only the account holder would know, rather than refusing the request.

Our response times: we acknowledge within 7 days and complete the deletion within 30 days of confirming the request, which is the limit set by Article 12(3) GDPR. In practice it is usually the same week.

3. What gets deleted

• Your login is permanently destroyed. The account cannot be signed into again, and no residual credential survives.
• Your profile is scrubbed. Your name, email address, photo, bio and travel preferences are erased from your profile record.
• Your date of birth, phone number and verification records go with it.
• Any location data you were sharing stops and is removed.

4. What is kept, and why

We would rather say this plainly than let you discover it later.

• Messages you sent in group chats stay in those chats, and reviews you wrote about other travellers stay on their profiles — shown against an anonymised, unnamed account rather than your name. We do not delete other people's copy of a shared conversation, because doing so would tear holes in their record of a trip they took. This is what Article 17(3) GDPR allows where erasing every last reference would be disproportionate.
• Financial and transaction records are retained where German tax and accounting law requires us to keep them (§ 147 AO, § 257 HGB). These are records of the transaction, not a usable profile of you, and no tax rule is optional at a user's request.
• Records of a safety or child-protection matter are retained where the law requires it. Deleting an account does not erase an open report against it, and cannot be used to escape one.

5. One thing that can block deletion

If you host a trip that still has money owed to you and not yet paid out, the app will stop the deletion and tell you what to settle first. Deleting the account underneath an unresolved payout would strand that trip with no way to ever settle it — for your travellers as much as for you. Settle it, or make sure everyone has been refunded, and the deletion goes through.

Nothing else blocks deletion.

6. Deleting the app is not deleting the account

Removing Vaylume from your phone leaves the account exactly where it was. Use one of the two routes above.

Questions about any of this, or about what we hold on you, go to support@vaylume.app. Our Privacy Policy sets out the full picture, including your rights of access, correction, portability and complaint.