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When ChatZilla.org deletes an account, why, and how to keep yours. To keep the site fast and free for everyone, accounts nobody uses are deleted.

• What counts as using your account: logging in, or anything you do while logged in: opening pages, chatting, messaging, posting, voting, playing. Someone else visiting your profile does not count.
• After 1 year without a login or any activity you get a warning email.
• Then one more warning every week: 4 emails in all.
• 28 days after the first warning the account is deleted with its posts, messages, chat room and uploads, and a last email says so.
• To keep it: log in once at any time before then. That stops the warnings and the 1 year starts again from that day.
• Logging out does not matter: your last login still counts.

• A group belongs to the member who made it (its owner). The owner and all their groups are treated as one family.
• What resets when one of the family logs in: a login or any activity on the owner or on any one of its groups keeps the whole family:
  • the 1 year starts again for the owner and every group,
  • warnings that were already sent stop, for all of them.
• So you do not have to log in to every group: one login on any of them is enough.
• Only the owner gets the warning emails. Groups never get warnings of their own while their owner exists. Every warning lists the owner's groups.
• A group made by a group belongs to the same family (its top owner).

• Groups are never deleted together with their owner. When an owner account is deleted (not used, "delete my account", or a ban), its groups are freed: each one becomes an account of its own, with its own login and password as before.
• The owner's last email names the groups that were freed.
• From then on each freed group follows the same 1 year rule by itself, and its emails go to the group's own email address (the one it was made with: the owner's).
• If the whole family was not used for 1 year, the freed groups were not used either: each one gets its first warning the next day and is deleted 28 days later, unless someone logs in to it.
• Logging in to a freed group keeps that group only.

• In settings, tick Delete account and update your profile. You get an email, the account is marked for deletion and can't be logged in to any more.
• It is deleted at the next nightly cleanup, with its posts, messages, chat room and uploads.
• To change your mind before then, update your profile again without the Delete account box ticked, while you are still logged in.
• Your groups are freed, not deleted (see above).

• A banned account can't log in: the login page says the account will be removed.
• Banned for deletion (delete my account, or not used for 1 year): deleted at the next nightly cleanup.
• Banned by an admin:
  • no emails are sent (the account can't log in to keep itself anyway),
  • it is deleted 1 year after the ban,
  • if it is unbanned before then, the 1 year stops. It is then a normal account again: if it was not used for over 1 year, the normal warnings start the next day and it has 28 days to log in.
• The groups of a banned owner are treated as accounts of their own.

• Email never confirmed: a new account whose email address is not confirmed is deleted 30 days after sign-up.
• Guest accounts (guest_...) are deleted 72 hours after they were made.

• Deleted: the account, its profile, posts, pictures, videos, comments, replies and votes, its chat room and channels, private messages, uploads, followers, badges and settings.
• Kept: freed groups (they become accounts of their own), and purchase and gift records (for refunds, bank questions and the law). Those records are closed: a new account with the same name never sees them.

Questions? Please use the contact form. We answer within 24 hours.