Delete Your FIMBY Account
If you are ready to leave FIMBY, you can delete your account. Your login is revoked right away, and we hold your data for 30 days so you can restore your account if you change your mind. After that, we remove or de-identify the personal information connected to your account, with a few narrow exceptions explained below.
Deleting your account affects your ability to log in and participate in FIMBY, but it may not remove every record connected to past activity.
We write this plainly because leaving should not be confusing.
Effective date: May 1, 2026
How to delete your account in the app
In FIMBY, go to:
Settings → Delete my account
The delete option appears only when you are acting as yourself. If you are helping someone else in FIMBY, you will not see a delete button for that person’s account.
When you confirm deletion in the app, your login is revoked right away. Your data stays preserved for 30 days so you can restore your account if you change your mind. After 30 days, the cleanup runs through the nightly batch (unless an active loan or legal/safety hold applies).
The 30-day grace window
Restoring your account
The moment you confirm in-app deletion, we email you a restore link that is good for the full 30 days. If you change your mind, click the link to bring your account back exactly as it was — posts, library items, messages, and profile.
If you lose the email, you can request a fresh restore link at /account-paused from the same device.
You can also reach the request page from the footer of any FIMBY page that does not require sign-in.
Deleting immediately (skip the grace)
The delete confirmation also has an opt-in checkbox: “Skip the 30-day grace period — delete immediately.” Check this if you are in an urgent situation — an abusive contact, a privacy emergency, or simply a clear and final decision — and you want your data scrubbed on tonight’s cleanup with no 30-day window.
Choosing the skip-grace option means your account cannot be restored. The default is to leave it unchecked so accidental taps do not lose data.
If you cannot log in
Email help@fimby.com from the email address on your FIMBY account.
Use a subject like:
We will send a verification email back to that same address. To continue, reply:
within 7 days.
If you reply CANCEL, or if you do not confirm within 7 days, we will not continue with the deletion request.
After you reply CONFIRM DELETE, there is a 24-hour safeguard window before irreversible cleanup starts. You can still reply during that window to stop the request. We do this so no one else can delete your account from a forwarded inbox or a mistaken message.
Supportees who cannot log in directly
A supporter cannot delete a supportee’s account from inside the app.
If a supportee wants to delete their account, they can contact help@fimby.com directly. A supporter can help send the request, but we need the supportee’s own signed confirmation before irreversible deletion begins.
Where contact details allow it, an admin will try to verify the request directly with the supportee by phone, email, or mail. If the supportee cannot understand or consent to the deletion request, we will not treat the supporter as having authority to consent for them. FIMBY does not currently support legal representatives or BC Representation Agreements; a future version may add that support.
What happens when you delete
Deleting your FIMBY account is not just hiding your profile. It starts a cleanup process.
When your account is deleted, the content licence you granted under the Terms of Service ends, except for the narrow retention exceptions described below.
Your login
Your login is revoked. You will no longer be able to sign in. FIMBY removes or de-identifies your username/email from the login record where the record no longer needs to be kept for security, legal, or operational reasons.
Your profile
Your profile is de-identified to A former neighbour. We remove direct identifying fields like name, photo, email, phone, mailing address, About text, care preferences, accessibility notes, and similar profile details.
We keep the bare contact row so records that also belong to other neighbours still work. For example, a completed lending history or a block someone filed should not break just because one person leaves.
Your posts
Your asks, offers, bulk buys, events, Shared Life posts, response threads, and response messages attached to those posts are deleted from live FIMBY records, unless a narrow legal, safety, or investigation hold applies.
Your library items
Library items you listed are deleted from live FIMBY records unless there is an open lending request or an unreturned loan against the item. If something is still physically out with a neighbour, we hold the relevant item and contact context until the item is resolved. Then the cleanup continues.
Active loans
If you borrowed something that has not been returned, or lent something that is still out, your login is still revoked but the data scrub pauses for the records needed to resolve the loan. Once the loan physically resolves, the rest of the deletion process continues.
Direct messages
Direct messages are part of conversations with other users. When you delete your account, we remove or de-identify your membership in those conversations and delete your authored messages from live FIMBY records where reasonably possible.
Some message context may remain visible to other participants where needed to preserve conversation history, safety records, an investigation, a dispute, or the integrity of another user’s account. Where that happens, your name is replaced with A former neighbour unless a narrow legal, safety, or investigation hold requires limited identifying information to be retained.
Completed lending history
Completed lending history may be kept for the other person who participated in the loan. Your name is replaced with A former neighbour.
Notifications
Notifications addressed to you are deleted from live FIMBY records.
Shared contact information
Shared contact details you consented to share are deleted from live FIMBY records.
Blocks
Blocks may be kept while affected accounts remain, with your side de-identified. This helps prevent a blocked neighbour from returning and bypassing the block.
Reports and feedback
Reports and feedback you filed are kept for 90 days so safety or abuse issues can be reviewed. After that, your submitter reference is de-identified unless a legal, safety, or investigation hold requires a longer limited retention.
Safety reports, abuse reports, disputes, blocks, enforcement records, and related notes may be retained where reasonably needed to protect users, investigate concerns, prevent misuse, or comply with legal obligations.
Support relationships
Support relationships involving you are ended. Related records are deleted or de-identified from live FIMBY records unless a narrow legal, safety, dispute, investigation, or operational reason requires limited retention. If someone was acting as you, or you were acting for someone else, that arrangement ends.
Push notification tokens
Push notification tokens are deleted from live FIMBY records.
Error logs
Error logs may be kept for debugging and security, but your contact reference is removed.
Backups and operational logs
Platform backups and operational logs may persist until the provider’s normal backup cycle ages them out, which is generally no longer than 90 days. Some deletion steps depend on third-party provider systems and backup cycles.
Information removed from the live FIMBY service may remain for a limited time in backups, logs, or provider systems before it is overwritten or expires according to those systems’ normal retention practices.
Why some things are kept
We try to delete as much as we can. A few things need more care:
- An active loan may need enough information for the item to get home.
- A completed lending record may belong to another neighbour too.
- A block may need to keep working after someone leaves.
- A safety report may need enough context for a short investigation period.
- A legal, safety, fraud, abuse, or dispute issue may require limited records for longer.
We keep these exceptions narrow. They are not a reason to keep your whole account.
De-identification means we remove direct identifiers where reasonably possible, but some non-identifying context may remain where needed for another user’s records, safety, fraud prevention, legal compliance, system integrity, or accurate community history.
When the reason for keeping a record ends — for example, a loan is resolved, a safety investigation closes, or the 90-day report window passes — the record is deleted or de-identified as part of the next regular cleanup cycle.
What deletion can’t reach outside FIMBY
Deleting your account does not delete screenshots, copies, downloads, exported content, notification previews, emails, texts, or records that another user may already have outside FIMBY.
Timeline
- In-app deletion (default): login revoked immediately; the restore link in your confirmation email is valid for 30 days; live data cleanup runs on day 30 through the nightly retention batch.
- In-app deletion (skip grace): login revoked immediately; live data cleanup runs on tonight’s nightly retention batch. Cannot be undone.
- Email deletion: login revoked within 24 hours after you reply CONFIRM DELETE; live data cleanup runs on the following nightly batch.
- Active loans: cleanup waits until the item physically resolves.
- Reports and feedback: submitter reference de-identified after 90 days unless a narrow hold applies.
- Backups: age out on each provider’s normal backup cycle, generally no longer than 90 days.
Some deletion, de-identification, backup, and log-retention processes may take additional time after your account is disabled or removed from active use.
Changing your mind
- In-app deletion (default): click the restore link in your delete confirmation email anytime in the 30-day grace window. If you lose the email, request a fresh link at /account-paused.
- Email deletion: reply CANCEL before the 24-hour safeguard window ends.
After irreversible cleanup begins, some information cannot be restored through FIMBY.
Confirmation
When the deletion process is complete, we will send confirmation where we still have a usable contact email and where doing so does not conflict with the deletion process.
Questions
Email help@fimby.com.