Option 1 — delete it yourself in the app
This is the fastest route and it takes about thirty seconds. The path is Profile → Settings → Delete Account.
- Open RaisedHand and make sure you are signed in.
- Tap Profile.
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Delete Account.
- Confirm when you are asked. This cannot be undone.
Your account is closed immediately and the deletion described below is completed within 30 days.
Option 2 — ask us to delete it
Use this if you can no longer sign in — for example you have lost the phone number the account uses, or you are a parent or guardian asking on behalf of your child.
Email kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com and tell us:
- the display name on the account;
- the phone number the account uses;
- that you are asking us to delete the account; and
- if you are a parent or guardian, say so — we will ask you to confirm the relationship.
Emailing us from the account holder’s own address, or including detail only the account holder would know, helps us verify the request quickly. We will never delete an account on someone else’s say-so without being satisfied it is genuine.
Or use the form below
The form on this page simply opens a pre-filled email in your mail app. It sends nothing on its own, stores nothing, and needs no account.
No email app? Send the same details manually to kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com from any email account. The form is a convenience, not a requirement.
What we delete and what we keep
We would rather tell you this plainly than bury it. Some things go completely. Some things stay, in a form that is no longer linked to you.
Deleted permanently
| What | When |
|---|---|
| Your profile | Display name, grade, school, bio and profile settings — within 30 days |
| Your phone number | Removed from our authentication records — within 30 days |
| Your avatar | Deleted from storage — within 30 days |
| Your direct chat messages | Messages you sent in direct chats — within 30 days |
| Your bookmarks | Immediately on deletion |
| Your follows and followers | Immediately on deletion |
| Your notification tokens | Immediately — you stop receiving push notifications at once |
| Your reputation points, badges and streaks | Removed from the leaderboard immediately |
Kept, and why
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your questions and answers, anonymised | Public threads are what other students learn from. If we deleted every answer when someone left, threads other students are relying on would break mid-conversation. Your posts stay, but your name, avatar and profile link are removed and replaced with a deleted-user placeholder, so they can no longer be traced back to you. | Indefinitely, in anonymised form |
| Attachments inside public threads | Kept only where an attachment is part of the question or answer itself — for example the photo of the problem being asked about. Detached from your identity in the same way. | Indefinitely, in anonymised form |
| Chat messages you sent to another user | Removed from our systems. Note that we cannot recall a copy the other person has already screenshotted or saved on their own device. | Deleted within 30 days |
| Moderation records | If your account was reported, suspended or banned, we keep a minimal record so a banned account cannot simply be recreated, and so we can justify the decision if it is challenged. | Up to 12 months |
| Crash and diagnostic data | Held by Firebase Crashlytics and not linked to your profile. | Up to 90 days |
| Encrypted backups | Our database is backed up on a rolling schedule. Deleted data can remain inside a backup until that backup expires. We do not restore deleted accounts from backups. | Up to 30 days after deletion |
| Records we are legally required to keep | Only where South African law obliges us to retain something, or where we need it to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim. | As long as the law requires |
Want a specific post gone as well? Delete individual questions or answers in the app before you delete your account — that removes the post itself, not just your name from it. Or tell us in your deletion email which posts you want removed and we will remove them along with the account.
How long it takes
- Immediately: your account is closed, you are signed out, your profile stops being visible to other students, and push notifications stop.
- Within 30 days: the deletion described above is completed across our systems.
- Within 30 days after that: the last routine backups containing your data expire.
If you emailed us, we will confirm in writing once the deletion is done. We respond to every deletion request within 30 days, as POPIA requires.
Deletion is permanent. We cannot restore a deleted account, its points, its badges or its history. If you only want a break, you can simply sign out and come back later — you do not have to delete anything.
Parents and guardians
If you are the parent or legal guardian of a RaisedHand user aged 13–17, you can ask us to delete their account and personal information. Email kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com with the child’s display name, the phone number on the account, and confirmation that you are the parent or guardian. We may ask a follow-up question to be satisfied the request is genuine before we act. See the Children and teens section of our Privacy Policy.
Other things you can ask for
Deleting everything is not your only option. Under POPIA you can also ask us to:
- show you the personal information we hold about you;
- correct anything that is wrong — most of it you can edit yourself under Profile in the app;
- object to how we process your information.
Email kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com and see the Your rights under POPIA section of our Privacy Policy.
Contact
- Deletion and privacy requests: kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com
- What we collect in the first place: Data Safety
- Everything else: Support & Contact