Data Retention Policy

Retention Principles

Flowtriq retains personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected, or as required by law. When a retention period expires, data is permanently deleted or irreversibly anonymised. There is no indefinite or open-ended retention.

Customers may request early deletion at any time by emailing [email protected]. Requests are fulfilled within 30 days, subject to any legal hold obligations.

Retention Schedule

Data Category	Retention Period	Reason & Notes
Network telemetry — raw (PPS/BPS per-second samples)	25 hours	High-resolution metric data used for real-time detection. Automatically purged after the rolling 25-hour window.
Network telemetry — aggregated (5-minute, hourly, daily summaries)	90 days	Rolled-up metrics retained for trend analysis, historical incident review, and dashboard charts.
PCAP (packet capture) files	7 days (standard plans); up to 365 days (enterprise plans)	Stored outside the web root. Automatically deleted at end of the plan's retention window. Downloadable via time-limited tokens (24-hour expiry) during the retention window.
Incident records	Lifetime of account	DDoS incident history is a core product feature. Records remain available until account deletion.
Audit log entries	90 days (standard plans); 1 year (enterprise plans)	SHA-256 hash-chained audit trail covering all user and system actions. Purged automatically per plan retention window.
Account data (name, email, workspace, role)	Active account; deleted immediately on confirmed account deletion	Permanently deleted upon account deletion confirmation. Billing records retained separately for 7 years.
Hashed passwords	Active account; deleted immediately on confirmed account deletion	bcrypt hashes only — plaintext passwords are never stored. Deleted with account data.
API keys (hashed)	Until revoked or account deleted	Stored as one-way hashes. Revocation is immediate. All keys deleted with account.
Session data	30-day idle timeout	Sessions expire after 30 days of inactivity. Immediately invalidated on logout or password change.
Billing records (Stripe customer ID, subscription history)	7 years	Retained to comply with financial reporting and tax obligations. Card data is held by Stripe, not Flowtriq.
Login and access logs	90 days	IP address, timestamp, and outcome of authentication events. Used for security monitoring.
Newsletter subscriptions (email address)	Until opt-out	Retained until the subscriber unsubscribes. Opt-out is immediate via the unsubscribe link in any email.
Contact form submissions	1 year	Used to respond to enquiries and maintain support records.
Notification channel credentials (webhook URLs, Slack tokens, PagerDuty keys)	Until removed by customer	Stored and retained until the customer deletes the integration. Deleted with account closure.
Agent registration tokens	Until revoked or account deleted	One-time registration tokens are consumed on use. Long-lived agent identity tokens are revoked on demand.

Deletion on Account Closure

When an account is deleted or subscription is cancelled, Flowtriq initiates a permanent deletion sequence:

All network telemetry, PCAP files, incident records, and audit logs are queued for deletion.
Account data (name, email, workspace settings) is deleted immediately upon confirmed deletion.
Billing records are retained for 7 years as required by financial law.
A deletion confirmation is available on request.

Data export before deletion: Customers may request a JSON or CSV export of their data before account closure. Submit requests to [email protected] at least 7 days before closing the account.

Legal Basis for Retention

Retention periods are set under the following legal bases (GDPR Article 6):

Category	Legal Basis
Network telemetry, incident records, PCAP files	Performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — necessary to deliver the DDoS detection service.
Audit logs, login logs	Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — security monitoring and tamper-evidence.
Billing records	Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) — financial reporting and tax compliance.
Newsletter subscriptions	Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — opt-in only, revocable at any time.

Contact

To request early deletion, a data export, or information about how your specific data is retained, contact [email protected]. We respond within 30 days as required by GDPR Article 12.