Data Retention Policy
Vocabulous! Data Retention Policy
Effective date: 3 September 2026
Last updated: 3 September 2026
Next review due: 28 February 2027
1. Introduction
Vocabulous! Education Pte. Ltd. — "Vocabulous!", "we", "us" — operates an online vocabulary tutoring platform for children and young people. This policy explains how long we keep the information we hold about you, and what happens to it at the end of that time.
It sits alongside our Privacy Policy, which explains what we collect and why. This policy answers the narrower question of when we let it go.
The principle behind everything below is a simple one, and it is what the PDPA's retention limitation obligation requires: we keep personal information only for as long as it still serves the purpose we collected it for, or for as long as the law requires us to. When neither is true any more, we delete it or strip it of anything that identifies a person.
If you have a question about any period set out here, email dpo@vocabulous.sg.
2. How we decide how long to keep something
Three things decide a retention period, and where they disagree, the longest one wins.
The purpose. Most information is kept while it is still doing the job it was collected for. A student's learning history is useful for as long as they are learning with us, and for a while afterwards in case they come back.
The law. Some records we are required to keep whether we want to or not. Financial records are the main example, and section 8 explains them.
Safety. Where something is needed for an open safeguarding concern, a complaint, or an investigation, we keep it until that matter is closed, even if its ordinary period has expired. We do not delete evidence that a child may need.
We review this policy every 6 months, and whenever we change what we collect or why.
3. Accounts
While your account is open, we keep it. Your profile, your settings, and the information you gave us at registration are held for as long as you are with us.
If you ask us to delete your account, we close it immediately — it stops working straight away and you cannot sign back in. We then hold what remains for 7 months, and delete it permanently at the end of that period. The wait exists so that a closure made in error is not irreversible the moment it happens: if you closed your account by mistake, email dpo@vocabulous.sg as soon as you can. We will do what we can, but we cannot promise that an account can be reopened.
A child's account works differently in one respect. If a parent or guardian withdraws their consent, the child's account is closed and the child cannot reopen it by signing in. Neither can a parent reopen it from their dashboard. This is deliberate — consent belongs to the parent, so a child should not be able to undo their decision — but it also means a withdrawal should be made deliberately, because we cannot simply undo it for you.
Where a parent never confirms consent, we do not keep the registration. If a parent does not confirm within 30 days, we delete everything gathered — the child's details and the parent's own contact details.
4. Learning information
Learning information is kept for the length of the student's account and 12 months afterwards. This covers lesson records, lesson plans, assessments, quiz answers, and revision history. The 12 months exist so that a student who returns does not start from nothing, and so that a parent can ask for a progress record shortly after leaving.
5. Messages, files, and things you upload
Messages are kept for 24 months from the last message in a conversation. A conversation that goes quiet is deleted two years later; one that continues stays, because the clock restarts each time somebody writes.
Files you upload as part of your learning — assignments, documents, photographs, video — are kept for as long as the learning information they belong to, and are deleted with it.
Reports and complaints about another user are kept for 24 months after the matter is closed, so that we can recognise a pattern of behaviour rather than treating each report as the first.
6. Tutor verification and payout information
A tutor's identity documents and certifications are kept for the length of their account and 90 days afterwards, then securely deleted. The 90 days cover a dispute or a payment question raised shortly after a tutor leaves.
Information verified through the government identity service is held on the same basis. We do not retain a tutor's NRIC or FIN number at any point.
Payout account details are kept while the account is open and for as long as the financial records in section 8 require, because a payment record without the account it was paid to is not a complete record.
7. Records of consent, and short-lived security items
We keep a record of parental consent for the length of the child's account and 24 months afterwards. We are required to be able to show that consent existed, when it was given, and from which account — so this record outlives the account it relates to. It holds the fact of the consent, not a copy of the child's information.
Short-lived items are purged automatically when they expire. Password reset links, email verification codes, and sign-in tokens are single-use and disappear on their own; we do not keep them once they have been used or have timed out.
Security records — the log of who accessed sensitive information and when, and the approximate location we derive from an IP address to limit repeated sign-in attempts — are kept for 24 months. These exist so that we can investigate an incident after it happens, which is often the only time anyone knows to look.
8. Financial records — the seven-year exception
Singapore tax law requires us to keep transaction records for 7 years. This is the one place where we cannot simply delete something because you have asked us to, and we would rather say so plainly than let you discover it later.
We anonymise rather than keep them intact. When you delete your account, the financial record survives but the person does not. The name becomes "Deleted User". The email address is replaced by an irreversible hash — a scrambled value that cannot be turned back into an address. Phone number, home address, date of birth, and parent contact details are erased outright.
What is left is an amount and a date, which cannot identify anyone. That satisfies the tax requirement without keeping a person's details for seven years.
Public reviews are anonymised the same way when the person who wrote them deletes their account: the review stays, the name does not.
9. What deletion actually means
Deletion reaches everything, not just the account. When an account is deleted we remove the profile, messages, uploaded files, sign-in tokens, and learning records — not only the record that made the account visible. An account that has disappeared from view while its contents remain has not been deleted, and we do not count that as deletion.
Backups are the one qualification. Deleted information may persist for a limited period in encrypted backups until those backups are rotated out of the cycle in the ordinary course. Those backups exist for catastrophe recovery. We do not restore deleted personal information back into the live platform, so a deleted account does not reappear because a backup was used.
Anonymised information is not personal information. Once a record has been stripped of everything identifying, as section 8 describes, it is no longer about a person and this policy no longer governs it.
10. Reviewing this policy, and how to contact us
Our Data Protection Officer owns this policy and reviews it every 6 months, and whenever we change what we collect or why. The date at the top of this page shows when the next review is due, and any change to this policy is approved by the Data Protection Officer before it takes effect.
If you want to know what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, you can do most of it yourself from your account settings — and for anything else:
Vocabulous! Education Pte. Ltd.
Data Protection Officer: dpo@vocabulous.sg
Please put "Personal Data Request" in the subject line so we can route it correctly. We respond within 15 days wherever possible, and always within 30.