Data Retention & Deletion
Retention with a defined purpose
Effective date: August 25, 2026
Blackwall Systems maintains retention and deletion practices intended to keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the service, security, legal, and business purpose for which it is processed.
1. General rule
Personal data is retained for the shortest period reasonably necessary for an enabled service or documented business purpose, subject to merchant-configurable settings, platform obligations, security needs, and legal requirements.
2. Product data categories
Live agent presence
Presence heartbeats are operationally considered online only for a short window (currently approximately 45 seconds). Stale presence records are periodically pruned and are not intended as long-term customer records.
Conversations & support
Stored conversations and support records follow merchant-configurable retention where available. Merchants may delete or export applicable records through product controls.
Analytics & operational records
Analytics and operational records follow configured or product retention periods and are minimized where practical. Security and audit records may be retained longer when needed to investigate abuse or demonstrate compliance.
Knowledge content
Merchant-uploaded knowledge content is retained while the merchant uses the feature or until deleted, subject to platform and legal requirements.
Order/customer verification
Customer and order data is accessed only as necessary to perform merchant-enabled commerce/support functions. Blackwall does not retain additional protected order data merely because it was retrieved from Shopify.
Billing & licenses
Subscription, invoice, license, fraud-prevention, tax, and payment-status records may be retained for the duration of the business relationship and for a reasonable period afterward as needed for accounting, dispute, fraud, tax, or legal obligations.
3. Shopify privacy requests
For the Shopify edition, Blackwall authenticates and processes Shopify's required customer data-request, customer-redaction, and shop-redaction webhooks. Redaction workflows delete applicable Blackwall-held customer data and installation/session data within the scope of the request.
4. Merchant controls
Where the application offers configurable retention, archive, cleanup, export, or deletion controls, those settings govern the applicable product records subject to minimum security and legal requirements.
5. Backups and recovery copies
Deletion from active systems may not instantly remove information from provider-managed recovery copies. Backup or recovery copies are protected from ordinary use and age out according to the applicable provider or recovery lifecycle unless preservation is required by law.
6. Legal and security exceptions
Blackwall may retain limited records for longer periods where reasonably necessary for tax, accounting, billing disputes, fraud prevention, abuse investigation, security incidents, legal claims, or regulatory obligations.
7. Requests
Merchants and individuals may submit applicable retention or deletion questions through the Blackwall Systems contact form.