Deleting your account

You can delete your Kpnovel account and the personal data attached to it. This page says how, what goes, what stays and why, and how long it takes. It applies to the app and to kpnovel.com, both of which are the same account.

How to ask

In the app. Open Me, then Settings, then Delete account. It asks you to confirm, and tells you the date your data will be erased. This is the fastest route and it needs nobody's help.

Without the app. Write to us through the contact form at kpnovel.com/contact, or email info@kpnovel.com from the address your account uses, and say you want your account deleted. We will act on it whether or not you still have Kpnovel installed. If you write from a different address we will ask you one or two questions first, because deleting the wrong person's account on request is its own kind of harm.

Guest accounts. If you have never signed in, your account holds no email address and no name, and the only thing linking it to you is a random value stored on your own device. We cannot find it from the outside and neither can anybody else. To have it deleted properly, sign in first — the guest account becomes yours — and then use Delete account. If you would rather not sign in, removing the app, or clearing its data in your phone's settings, destroys the only link to that account; what remains on our side is a row holding a random value, your free stones and whatever you read, with nothing in it that identifies a person.

What happens, and when

Your account is closed immediately. You are signed out everywhere and you cannot sign back in.

Thirty days later your personal data is erased. The thirty days exist so that somebody who deletes an account in anger, or by accident, can still reach us and have it stopped. Nothing is published, shared or sold during that window; the account is simply closed and waiting. Once the thirty days pass, erasure runs automatically.

What is erased

Your email address, your display name, your profile picture and your bio. Your library, your bookmarks, your reading positions and your unlocked chapters. Your comments, your reviews, your votes and the likes you gave. The accounts you follow and the accounts you blocked. Your notifications. Anything you reported to us, including the reason you gave for leaving. Everything that could sign you back in: your sign-in identities, your sessions and any outstanding email codes. Your advert and daily-reward history.

What is kept, and why

Records of money. When you buy stones, company and tax law in the United Kingdom requires us to keep the record of the transaction — the order identifier, the amount and the date — for six years. We cannot delete these on request and neither can anybody else. They no longer identify you: what remains is an emptied account row that exists only so those financial records still point somewhere.

We never held your card details at all. Apple and Google take the payment; the card never reaches our servers.

Things that were never personal. We count how often a search term was used on a given day. That count has no account attached to it and never has, so there is nothing in it to erase.

If you change your mind

Write to us at info@kpnovel.com within the thirty days and we will stop it. After the thirty days there is nothing left to restore, and we would not be able to help even if we wanted to.

Stones and purchases

Deleting your account ends your access to any stones left in it, and stones are not refundable on deletion. If you believe you are owed a refund, ask for it before you delete — see the refunds policy. Once the account is gone we cannot look up what you had.

If something goes wrong

If you ask for deletion and it does not happen, write to info@kpnovel.com. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.