# Retention and deletion

What your agent's conversations leave behind, how long it stays, and how to
answer a person who asks for their data or asks to be forgotten.

## What is encrypted

Conversation text, contacts' phone numbers and emails, what the agent
[remembers](https://vatio.ai/docs/tools#memory) about a person, tool-call arguments, your backend's
answers to them, reported replies and the eval cases made from them are
encrypted at rest. Delivery records from WhatsApp and Instagram keep which
message it was and when, not what it said or who sent it.

Every model call goes to an endpoint with zero data retention: see
[Models and data](https://vatio.ai/docs/model).

## Who at Vatio can see it

Nobody, by default. Vatio staff see a workspace's conversations and contact
details only while its owner has given support access, or during an emergency
access an admin opened with a reason, which emails the owner at once. Both
expire on their own and every read under them is recorded in the workspace's
**Activity**. See [Teams](https://vatio.ai/docs/team#vatio-support-access).

## How long it stays

| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Conversations, messages and files | Until you delete them, or your workspace's retention period runs out |
| Your backend's answers to tool calls | 30 days |
| Access logs | 90 days |
| The workspace's **Activity** (who did what) | 1 year |
| A deleted workspace | 30 days, then everything in it is purged |

## Set a retention period

In the inbox, the owner opens **Security** and chooses how long to keep
conversations: 30, 90, 180 or 365 days, or until someone deletes them. Every night, a conversation with no new message for
longer than that is deleted with its messages, files, tool calls and channel
deliveries. A contact left with no conversation is deleted too, with what the
agent remembered about them. Each run is recorded in the workspace's
**Activity** with how much it deleted.

Every workspace is treated as holding sensitive data: conversations and
contact details stay out of Vatio's own support tools unless the owner grants
support access. The same page lets the owner require
[two-step verification](https://vatio.ai/docs/team#two-step-verification-and-sessions) from the
whole team, which also closes everyone's sessions after 12 hours without use.

## Export or delete one person

When someone asks for what you keep about them, or asks to be forgotten:

- **From the inbox.** Open a conversation with them, open the contact pane,
  and use **Download their data** or **Delete this contact and their data**.
  Deleting asks you to type a word first. Only the owner and developer members
  see these; supervisors do not.
- **From your backend.** Call the [Contacts API](https://vatio.ai/docs/api/contacts).

The export is one JSON file: the contact, the channels they wrote from, what
the agent remembers about them, and every conversation with its messages.

Deleting removes the contact and their conversations, messages, files, tool
calls, channel deliveries, memories, outreaches, and the eval cases made from
their replies with those cases' replays. It cannot be undone. Both are
recorded in **Activity**, without the person's name.