Data retention and automatic account deletion

By default, user accounts on ThingLink remain active indefinitely unless they are manually deactivated and deleted by administrators users through the Users page.

You can set a data retention period to automatically delete inactive user accounts and help you meet data privacy requirements. 

Overview

The data retention period is an optional setting that can be configured via your Organization Settings page. When enabled, ThingLink will automatically deactivate user accounts that have been inactive for a specified number of days. The deactivated user accounts are then permanently deleted 30 days after being deactivated.

The 30-day grace period allows administrator users to either restore the accounts or archive content created by the deactivated users before their accounts are permanently deleted. If no action is taken during this period, both the user accounts and their content will be deleted.

You can set different data retention periods for different user roles (e.g. teachers and students).

How to configure automatic account deletion

Important: please make sure to either restore or delete any user accounts you have already deactivated before configuring the data retention period. This will help prevent unintentional data loss.

1. As the administrator of your ThingLink account, go to the 'Organization' page.
2. Select the Settings tab and scroll down to the "Data retention period (days)" setting
3. Click the Edit button. This will bring up a new window where you can set the data retention period for different user roles.
   Note that you can enable this feature for one user role without enabling it for the other. For example, you can set the data retention period for Student accounts and leave it blank for Teacher accounts. This will ensure that only Student accounts are deactivated automatically.

Once the setting is configured, ThingLink will check the last activity date for all user accounts under your license. Accounts that have been inactive for the specified number of days will be automatically deactivated, and then permanently deleted 30 days later.

Example: delete inactive student accounts after 1 year of inactivity

1. Set the data retention period for students to 335 days
2. After Student A has been inactive for 335 days, their account is deactivated.
3. If Student A's account is not manually restored or deleted during the next 30 days, it will be permanently deleted - along with all associated content and data - on the 365th day of inactivity.

Miscellaneous notes & frequently asked questions

• This setting is available on all organizational accounts.
• Remember that data deletion is permanent. The ThingLink team cannot recover any data once an account is permanently deleted, which is why there is a 30-day grace period between account deactivation and deletion.
• This setting does not affect administrator users. Inactive administrator users must be deleted manually if needed.
• ThingLink checks for inactive accounts and performs deactivations and deletions once per day, around midnight UTC.

Please contact our support team if you have any questions regarding this setting.