Leaving or deleting your account

Sign out of this phone, or delete your account for good, and what happens to your beans.

Two choices

Open Settings and tap Account Deletion & Sign Out, at the bottom. You can:

Remove from This Device Only: sign this phone out. Your account stays in your community. You can come back with your 12 words, or with a linked sign-in account.
Permanently Delete Account: delete your account in this community for good. The phone keeps your key for your other communities.

Going away for a while? Holiday Mode may be what you want. See "Going away".

Signing out of this phone

Tap Sign Out (Device Only).
Type WIPE and tap Confirm Sign Out.
Pass your phone's lock screen check, then tap Sign Out to confirm.

In the web app, tap Sign Out (Device Only), then Confirm Sign Out. There is no WIPE to type and no lock screen step.

Your account and every community you saved are removed from this phone. So are the links to Instagram or TikTok you made for your channels, and the categories you starred under For You. In the phone app, your community keeps those categories with your account, so they come back when you do. Your block list stays on the phone, kept for your account: come back with the same account and your blocks are still there. Another account on this phone does not get them. In the web app, your community keeps your blocks with your account: sign in again, on any browser, and they are back. Nothing about them stays on the computer. Without your 12 words you cannot get back in. Check you have them first.

A phone restored with a sign-in account may have no 12 words. Settings says so. There, without a linked sign-in account you cannot get back in. The app says so before you sign out, and Check Account Protection first takes you there. If you have the words written down, add them to the phone first (see "Your 12 words").

Deleting your account

Tap Permanently Delete Account.
The app checks the other communities on this phone and says what stays. Wait for it.
Type DELETE or your name and tap Permanently Purge Account.
Pass your phone's lock screen check, then tap Permanently Purge to confirm.

In the web app, type DELETE or your name and tap Purge Account. There is no lock screen step.

This cannot be undone, even with your 12 words.

You cannot delete while you have a deal under way. Finish or cancel it first.
If you hold beans, they go to the Commons.
If you are below zero, the Commons covers the debt.
If an admin had confirmed you and you owe Beans, the admins' names list keeps a note of what you owed for 3 years, and nobody can be confirmed against that entry until it is settled. See "What the admins can see".
Your profile becomes "Deleted Member".
Your posts come down, and their words, photos and places are wiped, also from posts that were done or taken down before. A deal made on one still shows, as "Deleted post".
Every message you wrote reads This message was deleted: in chats with a person, group chats, event chats and project and enterprise discussions. The photos you sent are deleted. Other people's messages stay as they are, so a conversation still makes sense. This cannot reach a copy someone saved, a screenshot, or a backup of the server made before you deleted (see "What stays a while" below). The other person's app blanks the older messages of yours it already holds too, and deletes the photos of yours it had opened, the next time it syncs. An older version of the app may keep those older messages, like a screenshot or a backup.
If you replied to the case on a vote on removing you, your reply is deleted, whether the vote is still open or has closed. The vote and its case stay.
Events you host are cancelled and wiped the same way. The people going can still read the rest of the event's chat until 30 days after the event.
A poll you asked is closed. It keeps its question and its votes.
The block list your community kept for you goes too.
If you help run a project or keep an enterprise, you stop being one of its collaborators or keepers. If you were a project's leader or an enterprise's lead keeper, the one who has been there longest takes over. If you were the only one, the project or enterprise pauses. Its beans stay with it.
It deletes your account only in the community you are using. Your accounts in other communities stay.
Your community can never bring the account back. To come back, join again with a new invite. The global community takes no invites: to come back there, join again as a new account, with new 12 words or a sign-in, from a phone or browser that does not hold this account. The global community refuses the deleted account for good, and a phone that is still in another community keeps it. On such a phone the app says This account's place in the global community was closed, so it can't join again. and stops offering the door to that account. The same sentence comes for a member the community removed.

If you run your community's server and you are its only owner, you cannot delete your account until there is another owner.

What stays a while

Your community's server deletes all of the above at once. It also takes your name and key out of its log. Some copies hold on for a while:

A standby. If your community has a standby copy of its server, the standby deletes them at its next copy.
Snapshots. The server keeps a copy of itself from each day, to undo a mistake. Each copy still holds your account as it was until the copy is deleted. That is after a week with the usual settings, and never more than 14 days.
Backups. A backup that an owner of the server downloaded before you deleted keeps everything until they delete it. The server can't reach it.
Backups kept elsewhere. If your community's server sends its backups to storage somewhere else, each one made before you deleted keeps your account as it was until the server deletes it there: after 30 days at most. These backups are locked: only the people your community trusts with its recovery code, and its owners, can open them.
A note of the delete. A short record of what was deleted, such as which two members were friends, stays for 30 days. The standby needs it to delete its copy.
The server's console log. It may show your name a while longer, until it fills up and is replaced. Nothing can change it.
Your trades stay in the ledger, under "Deleted Member", so everyone's beans still add up.
Notices kept for other people. For 7 days the server keeps the details of each notification it sent to the people you wrote to or dealt with, so their phone can show them (for example, that a message came in a chat). When you delete, your name and key are taken out of those notices, so one that said "Wren sent you a message" reads "A member sent you a message". The rest of a notice, such as which chat it was for, stays until its 7 days are up.

What stays on this phone

If you are a member of another community on this phone, your key and 12 words stay. The community you deleted goes from the phone's list, with its data on the phone, and the app opens one of your other communities. The app names them before you confirm.
A community the app can't reach counts as one you are still in, so a bad connection never takes your key.
If this is the last community on this phone where you are a member, your key and 12 words go from the phone too, as when you sign out. Write your 12 words down first: they get you back into any community this phone does not list.
If BeanPool's key vault keeps a copy of your key, from a sign-in account you linked, the app removes it first, while your key is still on the phone. Only your key can remove it, so afterwards nobody could. The vault deletes it at once, and from its backups within 30 days.
If the vault does not confirm it, the app says so, and your key stays on the phone for now. Tap Try Again, or Delete Anyway: your key leaves the phone and the vault copy stays, locked to your sign-in account. To remove it later, you need your key back, with your 12 words or that sign-in account, and a community that has you, to tap Disconnect in Account Protection.
To take BeanPool off the phone altogether, use Sign Out (Device Only).
If the community refuses the delete, or does not answer within 20 seconds, nothing on the phone changes. The app says so, and you can try again.

The web app keeps your key in the browser for each community's web address, and deleting removes it for that address only. The phone app and other communities' web addresses keep their own copy. If you pointed the web app at another community under Advanced / Subsystem, and the community whose web address it is still has you, the key stays and the web app goes back to that community. If the phone app put a copy of your key in BeanPool's key vault, deleting in the web app does not remove it: remove it in the phone app first, with Disconnect in Account Protection.

If a community does not recognise you

When the community the phone is set to does not have you as a member, the app asks that community what kind it is and shows one of these:

You're not a member here yet, on the global community, which anyone can join. Your account is fine: tap Join with this account to join it with the key and 12 words you already have, or switch to one of your communities. To try a different community, tap Not this community? Enter another address.
This community doesn't recognise you, on a community that joins people by invite. Usually the address is wrong, or you haven't joined it yet. Switch to one of your communities, enter another address and tap Reconnect, or tap Paste an invite and Join with this invite if you have one. The global community is offered too, with a line saying whether you can join it now.
On a community in a private preview, its own sentence, This community is in a private preview. Ask its owner for an invite., with a place for an invite from its owner or an admin.
Your account in (the community's name) was closed, when you deleted it there or the community removed it. Your other communities are not affected: switch to one of them or, where the app offers it, join the global community. If the community removed you, it still keeps your profile: tap Delete my account at (its name) to erase it. That opens Settings at Permanently Delete Account, the steps above. Settings is the one place the app still opens for this community; any other screen brings you back to this page.

Reconnect, and picking one of your communities, ask that community first. The phone moves only if it has you as a member (or you chose to visit it as a guest). If it doesn't, nothing changes: the phone stays on the community it was on, your list of communities stays as it was, and the app shows that community's page, saying your phone is still where it was and nothing was changed.

If another community on this phone still has you, or can't be reached, the app lists it to switch to and keeps your key. Tapping Delete this account from this phone first asks your other communities. It deletes only when none of them still has you.

If your community removed you

When a community removes a member, it keeps their profile, so that a vote can bring them back. You can still delete your account. In the phone app, the page that says your account there was closed has Delete my account at (the community's name), which opens Permanently Delete Account in Settings: the steps above. Then:

Your name, photo, bio, contact details, friends and sign-in recovery copies are erased, and so are the words, photos and places of your posts, except your polls.
Every message you wrote reads This message was deleted, and the photos you sent are deleted.
If you replied to the case on the vote about you, your reply is deleted. The vote and its case stay.
After that, your community cannot vote to bring the account back. To come back, join again with a new invite. The global community takes no invites, and a sign-in it removed cannot join it again.
If a deal of yours is still under way, the other member or an admin must close it first.

The same guide is in the BeanPool app, and works there without a connection: open Settings, then "Help & how it works" under BeanPool. Every other rule, guide and manual is in the Help Centre. Guide version 162.