Indo MailPolicies & help › Privacy
Data Retention Policy
A plain schedule of how long Indo Mail keeps each kind of data, why, and how it is deleted, including legal holds and the 35-day backup cycle.
1. Why we have a retention policy
INDO CHATS PRIVATE LIMITED, which runs Indo Mail, keeps personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected for, or as long as the law requires. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 expect this, and it is also good security: data we do not hold cannot be lost or misused.
This policy lists each type of data we hold, how long we keep it, and what happens at the end. It applies to every Indo Mail account and to all 21 apps. It should be read with our Data Protection Policy. Keeping periods are maximums unless we say otherwise. You can often delete things sooner yourself.
2. Retention schedule
| Data | How long we keep it | Why | What happens at the end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailbox content: messages, attachments, drafts, labels, contacts | Until you delete it, or until your account is closed | So that you can use your mail | Deleted messages go to Trash (see below). Contents are removed with the account. |
| Trash | 30 days after you delete a message | So that you can undo a mistake | Permanently deleted automatically after 30 days |
| Spam folder | 30 days after a message arrives there | So that you can rescue wrongly filtered mail | Permanently deleted automatically after 30 days |
| Deleted account | 30 days after you close it (a grace period to change your mind) | So that accidental or hacked closures can be reversed | Account and content are deleted; copies in backups are overwritten within 35 days of deletion |
| Sign-in logs: time, IP address, device or browser | One year | Security, abuse investigation and the CERT-In Directions of 28 April 2022 | Deleted automatically |
| Sign-up record: date, IP address, device | As long as the account is open, then deleted with the account | To investigate abuse and to show when consent was given | Deleted with the account, subject to legal holds |
| Outgoing mail queue | About 3 days, while delivery is retried | To deliver mail to outside providers | Message returned to you with a bounce, then removed from the queue |
| Drive and Photos files | Until you delete them, or until your account is closed | So that you can use your files | Removed from storage on deletion; copies in backups overwritten within 35 days |
| Share links | Until you switch the link off or it expires, or until the account is closed | So that the people you shared with can open the file | The link stops working and its signed access is invalidated |
| Web Push subscriptions | Until you turn notifications off, the browser cancels the subscription, or the account is closed | To deliver notifications you asked for | Subscription record deleted |
| Billing and GST records: invoices, payment reference, GST details | 8 years | Tax and company law | Deleted at the end of the period |
| Advertising statistics (clicks, impressions, spend) | Aggregated and kept for 24 months | To bill advertisers and report results | Deleted at the end of the period |
| Abuse reports and the action taken | 3 years | To spot repeat offenders and to answer disputes and appeals | Deleted at the end of the period |
| Law-enforcement requests and our responses | For as long as the law requires | To show lawful process was followed | Deleted when the legal need ends |
| Monthly internal admin report of accounts | 12 months | Internal oversight of account growth and security | Deleted at the end of the period |
| Support emails to us | Up to 3 years after the matter is closed | To help you and to deal with later complaints | Deleted at the end of the period |
A day count starts on the day of the event described in the second column. Where a row says 'deleted automatically', a scheduled job removes the data, and you do not need to ask.
3. Notes on the main categories
Mail and files. You are in control. Message and file contents stay until you remove them. Business and Enterprise administrators may set the rules for their organisation's mailboxes, and those rules apply to the organisation's data. Where an administrator deletes a user's mailbox, the same 30-day and 35-day cycles apply.
Sign-in logs. We keep each sign-in's time, IP address and device or browser for one year: the CERT-In Directions of 28 April 2022 require at least 180 days in India and the DPDP Rules, 2025 require one year for ICT systems. The logs are stored in India. You can see your own sign-in history in Settings → Sign-in history. An administrator of a Business or Enterprise domain can see the sign-in history of the users on that domain. After one year the entries are deleted, even if you have not closed your account.
Billing records. Section 36 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 and the Companies Act, 2013 oblige us to keep accounts and tax records for years. We keep invoices and related data for 8 years. They contain only what an invoice needs: your name or business name, GST details if you gave them, the plan and amount, and the payment reference. Card and UPI details are not in our records. They stay with the payment aggregator.
Advertising statistics. We keep ad performance numbers in aggregated form for 24 months. They are not linked to readers of ads, because Indo Mail does not profile readers.
Abuse reports. A report, the material we reviewed to decide, and the action we took are kept for 3 years. This helps us catch repeat offenders and deal with appeals. If the report involves child sexual abuse material, the law requires a different approach: see section 5.
Inactive accounts (from release 2.0.1): an unused personal account is turned off after 12 months and five reminders; its data is kept unchanged. If it stays unused for 24 months in total, it is closed and its data is deleted on the normal 30-day schedule. Support cases and the messages in them are kept for 3 years after the case is resolved, to handle follow-ups and grievances, then deleted. Daily health-check reports hold only counts and states and are overwritten every day.
4. Backups
We take daily backups and automatic snapshots of our systems, stored in India, to protect your data from loss. When you delete something, it is removed from live systems at once or at the end of the periods above. Copies in backups are not edited one by one. Instead, backups expire on a cycle, and deleted data ages out of backups within 35 days. Until then, backup copies are protected, are not used for any purpose other than restoring the system after a failure, and are not restored to live use unless needed. If we restore a backup, we run the deletions again so that data you have deleted does not come back.
5. Legal holds and preservation
We suspend deletion where the law requires it. This is called a legal hold. It can happen when:
- a court order, or a valid legal request from an authorised agency, requires us to preserve data. Our Law Enforcement Guidelines explain preservation requests, which we honour for 90 days unless extended by further lawful process;
- we have received notice of a claim or dispute and have a duty to preserve evidence;
- we have reported child sexual abuse material or another serious offence to the authorities and must keep the material and related records, as the law requires;
- a tax authority, regulator or auditor requires records for a longer period.
A legal hold covers only the data it needs to cover. When the hold ends, we resume the normal schedule and delete data that is past its time. Where the law allows, we tell the account holder about the hold. Where the law forbids it, we do not.
6. How we delete
- Automatic deletion. Scheduled jobs remove Trash, Spam, expired logs, expired reports and other data when it passes its limit.
- Account closure. You can close your account in Settings. We remove your mail, files, photos, contacts and settings after the 30-day grace period. You can cancel closure during that period by signing in. After 30 days, closure cannot be undone.
- Storage. Files in Amazon S3 are deleted through the storage service. Database records are deleted and the space reused. Backups expire within 35 days.
- Access removal. When data is marked for deletion, it is made unavailable to staff and users straight away, except for staff who handle legal holds.
- Processors. We instruct our processors, including Amazon Web Services, to delete data when we do. Browser push services keep only what the browser gives them and we cancel the subscription on our side.
- Confirmation. If you ask for erasure under the Data Protection Policy, we confirm by email when it is done and tell you about any data we must keep and why.
7. Data we may keep after deletion
Some records survive the deletion of an account because the law, or fairness to others, requires it. These are: billing and GST records for 8 years; records of abuse reports and enforcement for 3 years; law-enforcement correspondence for the period the law sets; data under a legal hold; and a minimal record that an address was used, so that it is not given to someone else straight away. A deleted address is not reissued to another person for at least 12 months, to stop mail meant for you from reaching a stranger and to stop impersonation. The records kept are limited to what is needed. They are not used for marketing.
8. Your rights and requests
You may ask us at any time for a summary of the data we hold about you, for its correction, or for its erasure. We will act within the time limits in the Data Protection Policy and tell you if the law requires us to keep any of it. To make a request, write to privacy@indoemail.in from your Indo Mail address or your recovery email. If you are unhappy with our reply, write to our Grievance Officer, Salena, at grievance@indoemail.in.
9. Review and changes
We review this schedule at least once a year, and whenever the law, our systems or our services change. For example, when we move our database from SQLite to Amazon RDS PostgreSQL, or when online checkout launches, we will check that these periods still apply. If a change would keep your data for longer than shown here, we will tell you before it takes effect.
This document is governed by the laws of India.
10. Contact
Retention and deletion questions: privacy@indoemail.in. Complaints: Salena, Grievance Officer, INDO CHATS PRIVATE LIMITED, grievance@indoemail.in, 168, GT Rd, near Aloka Cinema, Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal 711102, India.