Data retention policy
Definitions of account status:
- Active: The user has logged in recently and uses VoiceThread actively.
- Inactive: The user has not logged in recently and will move into the “archived” state in 30 days or less.
- Archived: The user has not logged in recently, so the account becomes frozen. They cannot log into the account and all content they owned appears deleted, but a license administrator can still restore the account if needed. Accounts are in the archived state for 30 days.
- Deleted: The account has been archived for 30 days without being reactivated by an administrator.
Members of a purchased license
Applies to accounts that belong to a VoiceThread organization that has been purchased and is in good standing:
Accounts are archived and deleted on different schedules depending on whether they own any content. There are three categories an account can fall into:
- Never accessed: Archived 1 year after creation.
- Accessed, but owns no content: Archived after 2 years of inactivity.
- Owns content: Account owner is notified by email after 2 years of inactivity that they need to log in to keep their account and content. If they do not log in within 30 days, the account is archived.
An account remains archived for 30 days, and if it is not reactivated by an administrator during that time, it is deleted permanently. Once an account is deleted, it cannot be restored.
The Administrator for a purchased license has the ability to delete any account or content under that license at any time. Learn more about what it means to be part of a VoiceThread license.
Note: If you have an institutional license and this policy does not meet your needs, please contact us to discuss purchasing an extension on deletion of inactive accounts.
Tracking deleted accounts
Any administrator for a VoiceThread license can view a list of all accounts slated for deletion or those that were deleted recently. Check out the inactive user documentation for details.
Expired licenses
Applies to organizations that were purchased and then allowed to lapse without removing associated members.
Once a license has lapsed, any active accounts under that license will be inaccessible, but all content will be preserved for 2 years unless the organization has a license agreement stating otherwise. If the license is reactivated in the future, disabled accounts that were not deleted will be re-enabled.
If the license remains lapsed for 2 years and does not have custom licensing with us, all accounts will be archived. 30 days after archive, they will be deleted permanently.
Free users
Applies to accounts that are not members of any purchased license.
- 1 year of inactivity: The account is locked, and resetting the password is the only way to regain access.
- 1 year after account lock: If there is no password reset and login since lockdown, the account has been inactive for 2 years at this point. If the account owns content, an email will be sent with a warning that the account will be archived in 30 days. Reset the password and log in to become active again.
- 30 days after email warning: The account is archived.
An account remains archived for 30 days, and if it is not reactivated during that time, it is deleted permanently. Once an account is deleted, it cannot be restored. If you need an archived account to be restored, please contact VoiceThread Support.
Deleted content
Once content or user information has been deleted from VoiceThread, it is no longer visible to end users or restorable outside of disaster recovery. The following describes how long different types of data are kept on VoiceThread’s servers.
- After 30 days – Full database backups are discarded. Database backups allow full reconstruction of the VoiceThread service for any point in time in the event of a disaster or malicious content removal. All personally identifiable information (PII) is removed, but anonymized data is kept for internal performance analysis.