Data Retention Policy

APEX retains information based on purpose, necessity, safety relevance, sensitivity, appeal status, correction status, audit needs, legal obligations, and retention review.

APEX does not retain personal data forever by default.

APEX may retain information for:

• service operation
• account verification
• Force Account Link
• child/community safety
• abuse prevention
• anti-evasion
• report review
• Member Review
• appeals
• correction requests
• deletion/privacy requests
• audit integrity
• legal obligations
• defense of legal claims
• security and service integrity

Where necessary and proportionate, APEX may retain limited safety records.

A limited safety record should contain only what is necessary for the safety purpose. It should not automatically include:

• full profile history
• stale usernames
• avatar URLs
• raw reports
• raw evidence
• private messages
• staff speculation
• unrelated personal data

A limited safety record may include:

• account identifiers
• account-link references
• reviewed safety status
• source category
• owner-safe summary
• appeal/correction status where applicable
• retention review dates
• legal hold awareness
• audit references

Limited safety records are access-controlled and subject to retention review. They are not public scores, public accusations, or public lists.

APEX should:

• delete or reduce safe/no-action data quickly
• avoid retaining stale usernames, avatar URLs, or profile snapshots longer than needed
• retain reports only as long as needed for review, audit, appeal, correction, safety, or legal purposes
• retain appeal and correction records long enough to support accountability and prevent repeated harm
• retain audit records where needed for integrity and compliance
• review retained safety records periodically
• avoid raw evidence retention where a summary is sufficient
• delete, reduce, or archive records when they are no longer necessary

Reports and Member Review records may be retained while under review, while related to active safety workflows, while needed for appeals/corrections, or while needed for audit/legal reasons.

Unsupported, duplicate, stale, or no-action reports should be reduced or deleted when no longer needed.

APEX may retain appeal, correction, deletion, objection, and privacy request records to show how requests were handled, prevent duplicate misuse, support user-safe status messages, and maintain audit integrity.

Activity Log and audit records may be retained to document settings changes, safety workflow actions, report status changes, request handling, and admin review actions.

Audit logs should not include raw evidence or unnecessary sensitive details.

Some records may be temporarily preserved where subject to legal, safety, compliance, investigation, or claims-related preservation needs.

Legal hold awareness should be scoped and reviewed. It should not be used as a general reason to keep unrelated records.

A deletion request may be granted, partially granted, denied, or closed depending on verification, the type of data, whether the data is still necessary, and whether safety, audit, legal, security, or appeal/correction reasons require limited retention.

Deletion does not always mean immediate full erasure of limited safety, audit, appeal, correction, security, or legal records.

APEX may retain limited information where necessary and proportionate.

APEX should delete or reduce nonessential data such as stale display names, avatar URLs, duplicate snapshots, safe/no-action scan results, and raw evidence where a summary is sufficient.

APEX should periodically review retained safety records and delete, reduce, or archive records when they are no longer necessary.

Retention review may consider:

• record purpose
• safety relevance
• age of record
• appeal or correction status
• legal hold awareness
• audit needs
• whether a summary can replace more detailed data
• whether the record remains necessary and proportionate

Users may request review of retained information through APEX's privacy, correction, objection, or appeal-review processes.

Contact information and request links are available at the bottom of this page and on the APEX Contact page.

APEX provides request paths for privacy, deletion, correction, objection, and appeal-review concerns. Use the dashboard where available.

If you cannot access the dashboard, use the contact information on the Contact page. APEX may need to verify account ownership before disclosing, deleting, correcting, or reviewing account-related information.