ISKCON Chicago
You can delete your account yourself, from inside the app, in about fifteen seconds and without asking anybody's permission. If you no longer have the app installed, write to the temple and it will be done for you. Both routes are set out below, along with exactly what is erased and the two things that are not.
So there is no doubt which account this page deletes.
org.iskconchicago.community on both the App Store and Google PlayMost people who stop coming want the first and would be dismayed to find the second had happened. The few who want the second mean it. The app draws them as two separate choices rather than one control with a warning attached, and this page does the same.
The app stops asking anything of you. Notifications stop and this phone is forgotten. Nothing at all is erased. The temple keeps your record as it stands, the way a congregation roll has always been kept.
Sign in again whenever you like and everything is exactly where you left it. There is no waiting period and nothing to restore.
The temple stops holding who you are. Your name, email, phone, address, date of birth, photograph, family and spiritual details are erased. Your messages go. Your sign-in stops working for good.
There is nothing to restore from afterwards. If you came back later you would be starting from an empty account, not recovering this one.
Either one deletes the same things. The first is immediate and needs nobody's help; the second exists for anybody who has already removed the app or cannot sign in.
DELETE in the box that appears, to confirm you mean it.You are signed out at once, and the erasure has already happened by then. Nobody at the temple approves it and nothing is queued.
Write to tech@iskconchicago.com from the email address on your account, and say that you want your account deleted. That is the whole request; there is no form.
Sending it from the address on the account is how the temple knows it is you. If you cannot reach that address any more, say so and it will ask you something else only you would know rather than refusing.
A Tech Admin then runs the same erasure the app runs. You will get a note back confirming it is done.
| Route | When it happens |
|---|---|
| In the app | Immediately. The erasure completes before you are signed out. Nothing waits on the temple. |
| By email | Within 30 days, and usually much sooner — generally within a few days. The temple confirms it is you first, then carries it out and writes back. |
| Backups | Supabase, which hosts the temple's database, keeps rolling backups for its own disaster recovery. A backup taken before your deletion is never used to bring your details back, and it ages out on its own. |
Every one of these is emptied or deleted outright the moment the deletion runs. Your name becomes A former devotee and your email address is replaced with a meaningless placeholder, which frees your real address should you ever want to start again.
Two things outlive the deletion. Neither of them says who you were: your name has been removed from both, and what is left is an hour and an amount with nobody attached to them. They are listed here rather than glossed over, because a deletion page that quietly kept something would be worse than one that says so.
| What survives | For how long | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The record that a seva was performed — the hours, the attendance, the month's totals | Indefinitely | A month's hours have to still add up a year later. If these went with you, months that had been closed and counted would silently change afterwards, and the temple's own service record would stop being true. |
| The record that a donation or sponsorship was received — the amount and the date | At least seven years | A charity in the United States must keep its donation records for tax and for audit, whatever any donor asks. This is a legal obligation the temple cannot waive. |
These records are attached to your account by a database key that deletes everything hanging off it. Deleting the row outright would take every hour you ever served with it, and every donation record the temple is required to keep. So the row is emptied instead: what remains is an identifier holding no name, no address, no way to reach you, and nothing that says who you were.
Nobody — including the temple's own leadership — can read a name back out of it. There is no name left in it to read.
Anything the temple holds outside this app — its own congregation records, paper forms, festival lists, its accounts — is not touched by deleting your app account, because it is not in the app. Write to the temple directly about those.
If you are the only person left who can administer the app, it will refuse to erase you until somebody else has been given that access. It says so at the time rather than failing silently. Otherwise the congregation would be left with an app nobody can run.
This is the only condition under which a deletion is refused. It is not a delay and not a review — give another devotee that access, and the deletion goes through at once.