There are two doors, and both of them work. Use whichever is nearer.
1 · Delete from inside PostEngage
Sign in, go to Settings → Account → Delete account, and type the confirmation the page asks for.
What happens, in order:
- Instagram disconnects immediately. The access token is revoked with Meta, the webhook subscription is removed, and no further comment or message reaches us. This happens at the start, not the end, so nothing arrives during the wait.
- A seven-day grace period runs. Your data is untouched and you can cancel from the same screen or from the link in the confirmation email. Nothing sends during it.
- On day seven the deletion runs, and we email you a receipt saying what was removed.
Seven days exists for one reason: account deletion is the one action nobody gets to undo, and a person who clicks it at 2am after a bad week should be able to change their mind at 9am.
Deleting one Instagram account instead of everything
If you only want an Instagram account out of PostEngage, disconnect it from Settings → Connections. That revokes the token, unsubscribes the webhook, and stops all processing for that account. Ask us and we will erase the conversations and contacts that came from it while leaving your PostEngage account alone.
2 · Delete through Instagram
You can start the same deletion from Meta's side, without signing in to us.
- Open Instagram, then Settings → Website permissions → Apps and websites.
- Find PostEngage and remove it.
Removing the app tells us to stop, immediately: we mark the connection revoked and stop all processing for it. Removal alone does not erase what we already hold — you asked us to stop, not to forget — so if you also want the data gone, use Meta's Request data deletion option in the same screen, or delete your account in step 1.
When Meta sends us a deletion request, we verify Meta's signature, record the request, and answer immediately with a confirmation code and a status URL.
Check a request
Every request has a code. To see where it stands, open:
https://api.postengage.ai/meta/data-deletion/status/<your-confirmation-code>
The page is public and needs no sign-in, so it deliberately shows only the status, the date the request was received, and the date it completed. It shows no name, no email address and no Instagram handle — anyone holding the code can open it.
If we have never held any data for the Instagram account in a request, the request still succeeds and still returns a code. There is nothing to delete, and saying so is the correct answer.
What is deleted
Everything personal:
- your profile, password hash, sessions and sign-in history,
- the Instagram connection, its token and its event history,
- conversations, messages, and the replies we sent,
- contacts and every fact recorded about them,
- leads, including any email address or phone number a contact typed,
- your voice profile and the samples it was built from,
- knowledge documents you uploaded, and the vectors made from them,
- automations, run records, held replies, and gate decisions.
What is kept, and why
Three things survive, and each one has a reason we are willing to defend.
| Kept | Why | What it holds about you |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices and payment records | Indian tax law requires a business to keep financial records for eight years. Deleting an invoice is not a privacy right, it is a books problem | An account id, the amount, the tax. Your name is removed |
| The record that a free trial was granted to an Instagram account | Otherwise the free grant can be claimed again indefinitely by deleting and re-registering | An opaque platform id and a timestamp. Nothing readable |
| The log of administrative access to the account | Who looked at an account has to outlive the account, or the audit trail is worthless | Which of our staff opened it, when, and the reason they gave |
Backups roll off on their own schedule; deleted data is not restored from them, and a restore for an unrelated incident re-runs pending deletions.
What we cannot delete
We can stop holding a copy. We cannot reach into Instagram and remove things that live there:
- comments and messages on Instagram itself, including replies we sent from your account — delete those in Instagram,
- anything Meta holds under its own retention rules,
- a message that already arrived in someone else's inbox.
Saying otherwise would be easier and would not be true.
How long it takes
| Step | Time |
|---|---|
| Instagram disconnected, processing stopped | Immediately |
| Grace period, cancellable | 7 days |
| Erasure executed | Within 24 hours of the grace period ending |
| Meta-initiated request acknowledged with a code | Immediately |
| Meta-initiated request completed | Within 30 days, normally the same day |
Someone else asking
If you commented on or messaged a creator who uses PostEngage and you want your messages removed, ask the creator: their account is where the data lives and they decide what happens to it. Write to us at grievance@postengage.ai and we will help them do it.
If something is wrong
Write to the grievance officer — details are on the privacy page — or email support@postengage.ai. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.