Data Deletion Instructions

EBIWAWA — African Family Digital Heritage Platform

Last updated: 2026-05-16

This page explains how to delete the personal data EBIWAWA holds about you.

1. Your right to deletion

Under the UK GDPR (Article 17), EU GDPR (Article 17), PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25, and CCPA you have the right to request deletion of your personal data, subject to the limited exceptions described in our Privacy Policy.

EBIWAWA gives you two ways to exercise this right: delete your account from within the platform (preferred — instant, fully automated), or contact us by email.

2. Delete your account from within the platform

This is the fastest way and is fully automated.

1. Sign in at https://app.ebiwawa.com
2. Click your avatar or name to open your profile (or navigate to Profile from the sidebar)
3. Scroll to the Privacy & Data section near the bottom of the profile page
4. Click Delete Account
5. In the confirmation dialog, type DELETE to enable the destructive action
6. Click Delete account

You will be signed out immediately and will no longer be able to sign in with this account. Within a few seconds:

• Your name, email, biography, birthplace, occupation, profile photo, contact details, and other identifying fields on your account are wiped.
• The Person record that represented you in your family tree is anonymized (name shown as "Deleted User").
• Your Firebase Authentication record is deleted, blocking future sign-in.

3. What's retained — and why

For the integrity of other family members' trees, the following are kept after deletion but show "Deleted User" in place of your name:

• Posts, comments, and chat messages you authored — other members rely on these for the continuity of their family record.
• Family relationships between your anonymized Person record and others (parent-of, sibling-of, spouse-of, etc.) — removing these would silently break other people's trees.
• Photos you uploaded to shared albums — but with no attribution to you.

We do not retain personal identifiers, contact details, or biographical content after deletion.

If you require fully irrevocable destruction of even the retained, anonymized records (for instance, under a specific legal claim), email us at the address below and we will manually purge.

4. Download a copy of your data first (optional)

Before deleting, you can download a complete JSON export of your data:

1. Profile → Privacy & Data → Download
2. A file named ebiwawa-export-<timestamp>.json saves to your device

The export is a single JSON file containing:

• Your profile — name, email, biography, birthplace, occupation, profile photo URL, preferences, and other identifying fields on your account
• Your linked Person record — the entry that represents you on your family tree
• Family trees you manage — name, creation date, and your role (creator / member) on each tree
• Posts, comments, likes, and reactions you've authored
• Direct and group chat messages you've sent
• Connection requests you've sent and received
• Invites you've sent to other family members
• Users you've blocked

The file is human-readable JSON — open it in any text editor, or import it into another tool that accepts JSON.

5. Email request

If you cannot sign in or prefer email contact, write to privacy@ebiwawa.com with:

• The email address associated with your EBIWAWA account
• "Account deletion request" in the subject line

We'll confirm receipt within 5 business days and complete the deletion within 30 days, as required by GDPR. For UK/EU enquiries, you may also contact our EU/UK representative — see the Privacy Policy for current details.

6. Facebook-initiated deletion

If you signed in via Facebook, you can also request EBIWAWA to delete your data through Facebook's settings:

1. Facebook → Settings & Privacy → Settings → Apps and Websites
2. Find EBIWAWA in the list and click Remove
3. In the dialog, check "Also delete activity data from EBIWAWA" before confirming

When you do this, Facebook notifies us to delete the data we hold tied to your Facebook account. The same deletion flow described in section 2 runs automatically.

7. Questions

For any questions about how we handle deletion requests, email privacy@ebiwawa.com or see our full Privacy Policy.