The principle
We keep what we need to run and improve the service. We delete what we don't. Where the law forces us to keep something, we keep it for the legally required period. Where you ask us to delete something, we delete it on the schedule described here.
1. Why we have a retention policy
Data that exists can be lost, leaked, subpoenaed, or misused. The less we hold, the less risk for everyone. But we also need to run a service, support customers, prevent fraud, and improve Relia over time. This policy is how we balance those two things, transparently.
2. Retention periods by category
2.1 Account-identifying information
This is the information that identifies you as a person or a business: your name, business name, email, phone, address, billing details, and anything else that ties your account to you.
| Lifecycle stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Active account | Retained while your account is open. |
| You close your account | Enters soft-delete. Recoverable for 30 days. |
| Day 31 after closure | Hard-deleted from production. |
| Day 60 after closure | Purged from all backups. |
2.2 Customer content you delete while active
Any item you delete while your account is active (a video, voice note, quote, customer record, whatever) follows this path:
| Lifecycle stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| You delete an item | Soft-deleted. Hidden from you, recoverable for 30 days. |
| Day 31 after soft-delete | Hard-deleted from production. |
| Day 60 after soft-delete | Purged from backups. |
2.3 Customer content retained after account closure
Be clear-eyed about this
When you close your account, we keep the videos, voice notes, quote drafts, and associated quote data you created in Relia. We do this for legitimate operational reasons: to help investigate fraud if a future dispute involves your historical activity, to maintain service continuity for your former customers who may still hold quotes you sent them, to diagnose production issues, and to analyse how the service is used. We do not use this retained content to train AI models unless you opted in during your active account period.
To protect the identities of people involved in that retained content, we apply these safeguards:
- Your personally identifying account information (name, email, phone, business name, billing details) is deleted on the 30/60 schedule after closure
- Where technically feasible, we de-identify personally identifying details inside retained videos, voice notes, and quotes (names, addresses, phone numbers, supplier identifiers) within 12 months of account closure
- Retained content is stored separately from active-account systems and subject to the same access controls
- Retained content is never shared with other users, sold, or disclosed outside Relia except as required by law
You can request hard deletion of your retained content at any time, including after account closure. Email [email protected]. We hard-delete within 30 days and purge from backups within 60 days. This is an unconditional right.
2.4 If you opted out of AI training
If you opted out of AI training (opt-out is the default; see Privacy Policy section 4.2 for what opt-in means), and you close your account, you can choose to have your content hard-deleted on the 30/60 schedule instead of retained. Email [email protected] or tick the "delete everything on closure" option when you close your account.
2.5 Usage and technical data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Application logs | 90 days |
| Error and crash logs | 90 days |
| Staff access audit logs (who accessed what customer content, and why) | 7 years |
| Login and authentication history | 12 months |
| Support tickets | 24 months from ticket closure |
| Aggregated, de-identified analytics | Indefinitely |
2.6 Billing and commercial records
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Invoices, payment records, tax records | 7 years (Australian tax law) |
| Contracts and legal correspondence | 7 years from termination |
3. How deletion actually works
3.1 Soft delete
When you delete something in Relia, we don't wipe it immediately. We mark it as deleted, hide it from you, and keep it recoverable for 30 days. This means if you accidentally delete something important, you can recover it (or support can recover it for you) within that window.
3.2 Hard delete
After 30 days, the item is removed from production. It is no longer in our database and cannot be recovered by you, by support, or by engineering. The only remaining copies at this point exist in backups.
3.3 Backup purge
Our backups rotate on a 60-day cycle. Within 60 days of a hard delete, the item will have aged out of all backup systems. At that point it is genuinely gone.
Why 30/60 and not instant
Instant deletion sounds better but breaks recovery. If your laptop dies tomorrow and you accidentally delete a month of quotes thinking it's junk, you'll want to recover them. Thirty days is the balance point. It's long enough to catch mistakes, short enough to matter.
4. Exceptions
We hold data past the scheduled deletion date only in the following circumstances:
- Legal hold: where data is subject to a subpoena, court order, regulatory investigation, or litigation. We notify you if legally permitted.
- Tax and accounting: invoices and payment records are retained for 7 years under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 and related legislation.
- Security incident investigation: data relevant to an active security investigation is preserved until the investigation concludes.
- Unresolved dispute: data relevant to an active dispute between you and Relia is preserved until the dispute is resolved.
Every exception is logged and reviewed quarterly by the Privacy Officer. Data retained under an exception is deleted as soon as the exception no longer applies.
5. Your right to request early deletion
You can request deletion of your customer content at any time, including after account closure. Contact [email protected]. We honour the request on the standard 30/60 schedule.
We cannot expedite backup purge past the 60-day cycle without rebuilding the backup infrastructure, which we will not do for a single request. For practical purposes, 60 days is the fastest we can go from request to genuinely gone.
6. Aggregated and de-identified data
We may retain aggregated, de-identified data (for example: "the average tradie on Relia sends 42 quotes per month") indefinitely. "De-identified" means the data cannot be linked back to you, your business, your customers, or your content. This is not personal information under the Privacy Act and is not subject to the retention rules above.
7. When we close our doors
If Relia ceases operations, we commit to giving you at least 90 days' notice and providing a full export of your data in a portable format. At the end of the wind-down period, all customer content is permanently deleted on the same 30/60 schedule described above.