Account Deletion and Closure

The three closures

• Close your account. Removes your personal Bearings Network / Portolan login and everything you authored. Handled via the settings surface with a 30-day grace window.
• Delete organization-provided data on a claimed record. Reverts the record's organization-authored fields (capabilities, facilities, evidence, offerings, contact functions) while leaving the public-source layer intact. Handled by the organization Owner or via a direct request.
• Archive a public Organization Record. Hides the record from the public directory. Public-source provenance is preserved for audit but the record no longer appears in search or directory listings.

Close your account

How to trigger

• Sign in and open Settings → Security. The Danger Zone card at the bottom exposes a "Delete account" action.
• Type DELETE to confirm. You may add an optional reason (retained on the deletion row and purged along with everything else).
• The action signs you out immediately.
• If you cannot sign in, email privacy@bearings.network from the address on your account. We verify authenticity before proceeding.

What happens immediately

• Your identity-provider account is disabled. Sign-in is no longer possible.
• Any claim you own is placed in a soft-deleted state; the claim is denied with reason gdpr_delete_requested and does not appear in team rosters or admin queues.
• Open disclosure requests and outbound invitations are withdrawn.

What happens after 30 days

• A scheduled purge removes your Postgres rows across authored surfaces: fact edits, dispute submissions, disclosure history, team-membership records, invitations you sent, and the deletion row itself.
• The identity-provider user is permanently deleted.
• Anonymized audit markers required for security compliance (e.g. that a specific state transition happened at a specific time) may persist without any personal identifier.

Reversing before the 30-day window closes

During the grace window you can email privacy@bearings.network from the original account's email address to cancel the deletion. After the purge runs the request cannot be reversed.

What is NOT deleted

• Public-source facts on any Organization Record you had claimed — these are mirrored from SAM.gov, USPTO, and other public sources. They persist because they belong to the source, not to your account.
• The record itself. The Organization Record returns to its pre-claim Public Record state and remains publicly viewable.
• Records that other team members maintain. If you were one of several team members on a claim, removing your account does not remove the claim or the record — the organization continues under its remaining verified team.

Delete organization-provided data on a claimed record

Distinct from personal account deletion, an organization Owner can strip the record of everything the organization has authored while leaving the public-source layer in place. The record becomes a Public Record (unclaimed) and can be re-claimed later.

How to trigger

• The organization Owner opens Settings → Security for the target organization and uses the "Release claim + delete organization data" action.
• Confirmation follows the same discipline as account deletion (type DELETE to confirm).

What is removed

• Capabilities, facilities, evidence, offerings, mission alignment authored by the organization, contact functions, disclosure-request history originated by this organization, and the claim itself.

What remains

• Public-source facts (SAM/USAspending/USPTO/SBIR/grants).
• Derived facts (mission classifications, ecosystem categorization) rebuilt from the remaining inputs.

Archive a public Organization Record

Archival hides a record from the public directory, search, and indexing while preserving the underlying public-source provenance for audit. Archived records return a 410 status to search engines and drop out of directory listings and sitemaps.

Who can request

• The organization's current Owner on a claimed record, via privacy@bearings.network.
• An authorized representative of an unclaimed organization, via the same channel with attached authority documentation (senior-officer letterhead, corporate-registry role). Handled through the admin review queue.

What archival does

• Sets the record's lifecycle_state to archived, which routes the badge to ARCHIVED system-wide.
• Filters the record out of directory listings, search results, XML sitemaps, and public API responses.
• Returns HTTP 410 Gone on direct requests to the record's URL.
• Preserves the underlying public-source facts and their provenance for audit purposes.

Un-archiving

Archival is reversible on request from the same authorized party. Same channel: privacy@bearings.network.

What we will not do

• Silently delete a public record that mirrors an active SAM.gov registration. The correct remedy is to delist at SAM.gov, which triggers our re-ingestion and cleanup automatically.
• Purge records under legal hold. If a Bearings Network record is the subject of an active legal hold or subpoena, deletion is suspended for the duration of that hold and the requester is notified.
• Delete without verification. Every closure request is verified against the requesting party's authority — email address on file, sign-in confirmation, or (for admin-mediated flows) documented authority.

Data-access and portability requests

Alongside deletion, any account holder can request an export of the data associated with their account. Exports are returned as JSON and include: the account profile held by our identity provider (email, display name, creation date), every claim you authored, every field edit associated with your account, every disclosure request and response, and every dispute you filed. Request via privacy@bearings.network. Typical turnaround is 5 business days.

Changes to this policy

Changes are dated in the "Last reviewed" line at the top of this page. Changes to the grace window, the automated purge scope, or the archival semantics are announced to claimants via the in-app notification matrix.