Data retention and deletion policy

Your contributions

We do not delete your work on a schedule. The entries, people, places, relationships, and photographs you add stay on Local Past until you remove them.

This is deliberate. A community archive is only useful if records stay put, and other members may have built on what you added.

Closing your account

You can close your account yourself from the account data page. You will be asked to type a confirmation phrase first, because the change affects how you appear across the whole site.

Closing your account signs you out and removes your display name from everywhere you appear. Your entries, comments, and the discussion threads they belong to stay on the site, shown as the work of a former user. This is deliberate: other members may have built their own research on what you added, and removing it would break their work as well as yours.

Your display name is not released for anyone else to use. It stays reserved to your account, so no one can later appear under the name you used.

Closing an account does not delete your contributions. If you want them removed as well, delete them before you close your account, or send a deletion request first.

Re-opening a closed account

Closing your account is reversible. Signing in again with the same email and password brings you to a page offering to re-open the account, or to stay closed and sign back out.

Re-opening restores your access and your existing records. It does not restore your old display name, because that was removed when you closed the account, so you will be asked to set one again. You can choose the same name you used before, since it was held for you.

We keep your account record, the date you closed, and any note you gave us when closing, so that re-opening is possible and so support can understand the history. That note is private and is never published.

Account information

Account information is kept while your account exists, and afterwards only for as long as it is needed to support reopening, to keep people safe, or to meet an obligation that applies to us.

Signed-in members can use the account data page to request access, correction, export, or deletion of account data.

Safety and moderation records

Rate-limiting records used to protect forms and sign-in are cleared automatically within hours.

Reports, moderation decisions, and abuse signals are kept while they remain relevant to protecting people, handling a dispute, or meeting a legal obligation. Keeping them is what allows us to recognise repeat problems rather than treating each report as the first.

Asking for removal

Anyone can ask us to review material, whether or not they have an account. Use Report on the entry, comment, or photo when signed in, or the contact page otherwise.

We will remove or restrict material where it identifies a living person who has not agreed to it, infringes rights, or should not be public.