Last updated: 27 July 2026

You can delete your OnlyPaws account at any time, without asking us and without giving a reason. This page explains how, exactly what happens to your information, and what we keep.

1. How to delete your account

In the app: open the Profile tab, scroll to the bottom and tap Delete account. You will be asked to confirm. The deletion happens immediately — there is no waiting period and no retention email trying to talk you out of it.

If you cannot get into the app: email support@onlypaws.co.za from the address on your account and ask us to delete it. We will confirm it is you, action it, and reply to confirm. We aim to do this within 7 days and will not take longer than 30.

You do not need to install the app to make the request.

2. One thing that will stop it

If you have a walk that is assigned or in progress, deletion is refused until that walk is finished or cancelled. This is deliberate: a walk that loses its owner or its walker halfway through leaves a real dog somewhere with nobody accountable for it.

3. What is deleted outright

These are erased completely and cannot be recovered:

• Your device push notification tokens
• Your walk request claims
• Raw background location pings recorded from your device
• Walk requests you posted that never became a walk
• Your profile photo, phone number and name
• Your walker bio, suburbs, availability and last known location
• Your identity documents — ID document, proof of residence, and the identity verification record and decision from our verification provider
• The names and phone numbers of the references you gave us
• The text of any reviews you wrote
• The content of your chat messages, which become [deleted]
• Everything identifying about your dogs — name, breed, photo, notes, medical notes, medications, temperament, age, weight, sex, and every behavioural detail

4. What is kept, and why

Some records survive in an anonymised form. We are not keeping them because they are useful to us — we are keeping them because deleting them would damage other people's records or break obligations we cannot opt out of.

What survives	Why
The walk itself — date, duration, route, price	It is a record of a completed transaction between two people. The other party is entitled to their own history.
Star ratings you gave	Deleting them would silently move another person's average rating. The written comment is removed; the number stays.
The dog record, renamed "Removed"	A walker's record of the walks they completed has to still resolve. Everything identifying about the dog is cleared.
Payment and payout records	Required for tax and financial record-keeping.
Walk reports and safety records	Kept for 3 years, because an incident involving a dog or a person may surface long after the account is gone.
An empty shell of your account row, named "Deleted user"	It is what the surviving records point at. It holds no personal information.

That shell is itself deleted 12 months after you delete your account.

5. Everything expires anyway

Independently of account deletion, we delete data on a schedule. Nothing is kept indefinitely:

Data	Kept for
Background location pings	7 days
Raw GPS points from a walk	30 days after the walk ends (the route map shown to the owner is kept with the walk)
Chat messages	12 months
Walk requests	12 months
Deleted account shells	12 months
Waitlist signups	2 years
Walks and walk reports	3 years

6. If you only want some of it gone

You do not have to delete your whole account to remove things. In the app you can delete individual dogs, remove photos and videos from a walk, and clear your profile photo. Under POPIA you can also ask us to correct or delete specific information — email support@onlypaws.co.za.

7. If you are unhappy with how we handled it

Contact us first at support@onlypaws.co.za. If we do not resolve it, you have the right to complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa: complaints.IR@justice.gov.za.

See also the Privacy Policy for the full picture of what we collect and who else sees it.