OrbitSub Legal & Trust Center
Data Retention Policy
Complete 18-category retention schedule detailing how long OrbitSub stores account data, research, telemetry, moderation logs, deleted-account records, and tax ledgers — and when data is permanently purged.
Effective date: 1 October 2026Last updated: 25 October 2026Jurisdiction: New Delhi, India (Global Compliance)
This Data Retention Policy sets out the exact retention periods and automated purge schedules applied 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") across every category of data processed on orbitsub.com.
This Policy is an integral part of our Privacy Policy and is designed to comply with:
- Section 8(7) of the Indian Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDP Act") (requiring erasure of personal data once the specified purpose is no longer served, unless retention is necessary for compliance with any law);
- Rule 3(1)(g) & Rule 3(1)(h) of the Indian Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 ("IT Rules, 2021") (requiring 180-day preservation of registration and withdrawal records and lawfully removed content);
- The CERT-In Cyber Security Directions of 28 April 2022 (requiring 180-day retention of security and ICT system logs in India);
- The Indian Income-tax Act, 1961 & GST laws (requiring 8-year retention of billing, payment, and tax accounting ledgers); and
- Article 5(1)(e) (Storage Limitation) & Article 17 of the EU / UK GDPR.
1. Core Retention Principles
- Purpose-bound storage: We keep personal data in identifiable form only for as long as necessary to provide the Service you requested, protect platform security, or satisfy an explicit statutory retention period.
- Automated daily purge daemon: Our backend server runs an automated retention-enforcement job on startup and every twenty-four (24) hours (
server.ts&telemetry.ts) that permanently deletes expiredDeletedAccountrecords, expiredModeratedContentLogrecords, expiredSystemLogandSecurityEventLogrows, and expiredBehaviourSession/BehaviourEventrows without waiting for manual intervention. - Co-author & scholarly provenance protection: Where your work is intertwined with other researchers (such as co-authored papers or accepted reader suggestions in a Live Room), deleting your Account removes your personal identifiers while preserving the shared scholarly work under an anonymised credit so your co-authors' research is never broken.
2. Master Data Retention Schedule (18 Categories)
| # | Data Category & Database Model | Operational Purpose | Active Retention Period | Post-Deletion / Expiry Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Account & Academic Profile Data (User: email, username, display name, password hash, bio, avatar, position, affiliation, ORCID iD, website, interests, Founding 500 number) | Account authentication, researcher identity, and attribution on papers | Retained while your Account remains active | Erased immediately from the live User table when you delete your Account in Settings → Account (subject to the 180-day DeletedAccount statutory hold in Row 10) |
| 2 | Authentication Sessions & Refresh Tokens (Session & refreshToken cookie) | Keeping you signed in and detecting token-replay attacks | Up to 30 days from sign-in or last rotation | Revoked immediately on sign-out, password reset, or Account deletion; expired session rows purged automatically |
| 3 | Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Secrets & Backup Codes (twoFactorSecret, twoFactorBackupCodes) | Verifying TOTP codes and single-use account recovery codes | Retained only while 2FA is enabled on your Account | Erased immediately when you disable 2FA in Settings → Security or delete your Account |
| 4 | Solo Research Drafts, Published Papers, Outlines, CRDT State & Citation Reports (Research, yjsState, CitationReport) | Writing, real-time editing, citation verification, publishing, and exporting your work | Retained while your Account is active or until you delete the research room | Erased immediately when you delete the research room or delete your Account (if you are the sole author) |
| 5 | Co-Authored Research & Accepted Live Room Contributions (Research, ResearchContribution) | Maintaining multi-author papers and scholarly contribution provenance | Retained for the life of the co-authored or contributed paper | If you delete your Account, the shared paper remains intact for your co-authors and your user link is anonymised |
| 6 | Personal Library Sources, Uploaded PDFs & Connected Reference Managers (LibraryItem, Zotero / Mendeley OAuth tokens) | Grounding research, managing citations, and chatting with PDFs | Retained until you remove the item/connection or delete your Account | OAuth tokens are erased immediately when disconnected; Library items and uploaded PDFs are erased immediately on Account deletion |
| 7 | Comments, Likes, Votes, Saves, Follows & Community Memberships (Comment, Like, Save, Follow, CommunityMember) | Community discussion, feed ranking, and social graph | Retained until you delete the comment/interaction or delete your Account | Erased immediately upon Account deletion |
| 8 | Direct Messages & Media (Conversation, Message) | Private researcher-to-researcher communication | Retained while the conversation exists; individual messages can be unsent at any time | Unsent messages are removed immediately (unless already snapshotted in an abuse report under Row 9); Account deletion anonymises your sender reference |
| 9 | Abuse Reports & Reported DM Snapshots (Report, messageSnapshot) | Reviewing and enforcing Trust & Safety reports | Retained during moderation review and for 180 days post-resolution | Purged after the 180-day compliance window unless subject to an active legal hold or law-enforcement investigation |
| 10 | Deleted-Account Statutory Hold (DeletedAccount: email, username, display name, join date, deletion date) | Mandatory intermediary & cybersecurity recordkeeping under Indian IT Rules 2021 r. 3(1)(h) & CERT-In Directions | 180 days from the date of Account deletion in restricted, access-controlled storage | Permanently and automatically purged by our daily cleanup daemon once purgeAfter (180 days) expires |
| 11 | Moderated / Removed Content Statutory Hold (ModeratedContentLog) | Mandatory preservation of content removed for policy or legal violations under IT Rules 2021 r. 3(1)(g) | 180 days from the date of moderation removal | Permanently and automatically purged after 180 days unless preserved under a specific court or government order |
| 12 | First-Party Operational & Error Logs (SystemLog, including ORB-YYYYMMDD-XXXXXX Reference IDs) | Debugging crashes, slow requests, and user-reported ORB-... Reference IDs (PII/secrets scrubbed before write) | 90 days from log creation | Permanently and automatically purged by our daily retention daemon after 90 days |
| 13 | Security Audit Logs (SecurityEventLog: sign-ins, failed logins, password resets, 2FA events, IP, User-Agent) | Detecting account takeover, credential stuffing, and complying with CERT-In 180-day log mandate | 180 days from event timestamp | Permanently and automatically purged by our daily retention daemon after 180 days |
| 14 | First-Party Product Interaction Telemetry (BehaviourSession & BehaviourEvent) | Identifying broken UI flows, rage clicks, and dead clicks (opt-out anytime in Settings → Privacy) | 90 days from event timestamp | Permanently and automatically purged by our daily retention daemon after 90 days |
| 15 | Support Tickets & Contact Submissions (SupportTicket, SupportTicketMessage) | Resolving user support inquiries and tracking SLA compliance | 3 years from ticket closure | Deleted or fully anonymised after 3 years (reflecting the limitation period under the Indian Limitation Act, 1963) |
| 16 | Statutory Privacy Requests & Grievance Officer Filings (DataPrivacyRequest, GrievanceRecord) | Demonstrating statutory compliance with DPDP Act s. 11–13, IT Rules 2021 r. 3(2), and GDPR Art. 12–22 | 3 years from request completion or grievance closure | Deleted after 3 years |
| 17 | Product Feedback Board & Optional Exit/Cancellation Surveys (Feedback, FeedbackSurveyResponse) | Prioritising product roadmap and understanding why users cancel or leave | Feedback board posts stay while public; survey responses retained for 2 years in identifiable form | Survey responses are de-identified into aggregate statistics upon Account deletion or after 2 years |
| 18 | Payment, Subscription & Refund Audit Ledger (PaymentEventLog: PayPal subscription/sale/refund IDs, amounts, currency, timestamps) | Tax accounting, GST/income-tax audit trail, duplicate-charge prevention, and financial reconciliation | 8 years from the end of the relevant financial year | Retained strictly for statutory tax and accounting compliance under the Indian Income-tax Act, 1961; never used for marketing |
3. Encrypted Database Backups
To protect against hardware failure or disaster, our database infrastructure maintains encrypted rolling snapshots for up to fourteen (14) days. When data is deleted from our live production tables, it becomes immediately inaccessible through the application and is automatically overwritten as rolling backups expire within 14 days.
4. Legal Hold Exception
In the event we receive a valid preservation order, subpoena, court order, or direction from a competent law-enforcement or regulatory authority, or where preservation is necessary to establish, exercise, or defend an active legal claim, we may suspend automated deletion of the specific records covered by that hold until the legal proceeding or order is resolved.
5. Contact & Questions
For questions regarding data retention or to exercise your erasure rights, see our User Data Deletion Policy or contact our Grievance Officer (Karan) at team@orbitsub.com (effective date: 1 October 2026; last updated: 25 October 2026).