User Data Deletion Policy

This User Data Deletion Policy explains how you can delete specific content or permanently delete your entire Account on orbitsub.com, operated by OrbitSub, a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Karan in New Delhi, India, and registered as a micro enterprise under the Udyam (MSME) scheme of the Government of India ("OrbitSub", "we", "us", or "our"), and what happens to your data at each stage.

This Policy gives effect to your right to erasure under Section 12(3) of the Indian Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDP Act"), Article 17 of the EU / UK GDPR, and the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA / CPRA"), while honouring mandatory statutory preservation rules under the Indian Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 ("IT Rules, 2021") and tax laws.

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1. Before You Delete Your Account: Two Important Steps

1.1 Export your research and data first

Account deletion is irreversible. Before deleting your Account, we strongly recommend exporting any research or bibliography you wish to keep:

• Per-paper exports: Open any of your Research Rooms or published papers and export to Typeset PDF, Microsoft Word (.docx), LaTeX Source Archive (main.tex + references.bib ZIP), Overleaf, Markdown (.md), or Citation Report PDF.
• Full statutory data portability archive: Open Settings → Privacy → Statutory data rights and click Request export (or email team@orbitsub.com) if you want a complete machine-readable archive of your Account before you delete it.

1.2 Cancel any active PayPal subscription first (Active Subscription Safeguard)

To ensure that PayPal never charges you after your OrbitSub Account is gone, our Account deletion endpoint (DELETE /api/users/me) enforces an automatic Active Subscription Safeguard:

• If your Account currently has an active, trialing, or past-due PayPal subscription, our server will pause the deletion request (409 ACTIVE_SUBSCRIPTION) and prompt you to cancel your subscription in Settings → Billing first.
• As soon as you cancel the subscription in Settings → Billing (which takes one click), you may immediately proceed with deleting your Account.

2. How to Permanently Delete Your Account

Method A: Instant Self-Serve Deletion in the App (Recommended)

1. Sign in to orbitsub.com and open Settings → Account.
2. If you have an active paid subscription, first open Settings → Billing and click Cancel subscription.
3. In Settings → Account, scroll to the Delete account section and click Delete my account.
4. Optionally select a reason in the brief exit feedback prompt (or skip it) and confirm deletion.
5. Your Account is permanently deleted immediately, your active sessions and refreshToken cookie are revoked at once, and you are signed out.

Method B: Deletion Request by Email (If You Cannot Sign In)

If you have lost access to your two-factor authenticator or cannot sign in to the web app:

1. Send an email to team@orbitsub.com from the email address registered to your OrbitSub Account with the subject line Account Deletion Request — @yourusername.
2. Our team will acknowledge your request within twenty-four (24) hours, verify your ownership of the registered email address (and cancel any linked PayPal billing agreement on your behalf if needed), and complete the erasure within seven (7) business days.

3. How to Delete Individual Items Without Deleting Your Account

You do not need to delete your entire Account to remove specific items from OrbitSub:

4. What Happens When Your Account Is Deleted

When your Account is deleted, our system executes a multi-stage cleanup across our database:

1. Erased immediately from live production tables:
   • Your User row (email, username, display name, password hash, 2FA secrets, backup codes, Google OAuth ID, avatar, bio, academic position, affiliation, ORCID iD, website, and preferences);
   • All active Session records and refresh tokens;
   • All solo Research rooms, drafts, published papers, outlines, real-time yjsState documents, and CitationReport records owned solely by you;
   • All LibraryItem records, uploaded PDFs, and connected reference-manager tokens;
   • All your comments, likes, upvotes/downvotes, saved bookmarks, follow relationships, notifications, and Community memberships.
2. Preserved under anonymised attribution (Co-authored & Community works):
   • If you co-authored a research paper with other users, or if another author accepted your reader suggestion (ResearchContribution) into their paper, the co-authored paper and its text remain intact for the remaining authors, while your personal identifier is severed and replaced with an anonymised placeholder.
   • If you created a public Community (o/<slug>) that has other active members, the Community remains open for its members without your personal profile attached.
3. Held in restricted statutory storage for 180 days (DeletedAccount):
   • As strictly required by Rule 3(1)(h) of the Indian IT Rules, 2021 and the CERT-In Cyber Security Directions, 2022, a minimal record in the restricted DeletedAccount table — containing only your user ID, email, username, display name, account creation timestamp, deletion timestamp, and purgeAfter timestamp (180 days after deletion) — is retained offline from public view.
   • Once the 180-day statutory window expires, our daily retention daemon permanently and automatically purges the DeletedAccount row.
4. Retained in the financial tax ledger for 8 years (PaymentEventLog):
   • If you ever made a payment or received a refund through PayPal, the transaction records in PaymentEventLog are retained for eight (8) years from the end of the relevant financial year as mandated by the Indian Income-tax Act, 1961 and GST laws.
5. Overwritten in encrypted backups within 14 days:
   • Rolling encrypted database backups are automatically overwritten within fourteen (14) days.

5. Questions or Assistance

If you need any assistance with deleting data or verifying that an erasure request has been completed, please contact our Data Protection & Grievance Officer (Karan) at team@orbitsub.com (effective date: 1 October 2026; last updated: 25 October 2026).