What is kept, and for how long
Each window below is a number that exists in Ping's source — the delete statements, the expiry columns and the cache lifetime — not a number we hoped for. A schedule kinder than the job would be the one thing this page must never be.
| What | Kept |
|---|---|
| Your location trailDeleted by a job that runs against every account, on every plan. | 30 days |
| Sharing history (when you were sharing, paused or hidden)An open span is kept while it is open, because it has not happened yet. | 30 days after it ends |
| A record of who opened your cardKept so you can see it. It expires on its own row, not on a sweep. | 30 days |
| Sign-in sessionsThirty days after you last use it, or a year after you signed in, whichever comes first. Deleted on the same hourly sweep once it expires, on the device it was signed in on. | 30 days idle, 365 days maximum |
| Messages, including arrivals you postedAn arrival is a message. It stays in the conversation like anything else you sent. | Until you delete your account |
| Other people's last position, on your phoneGoes sooner when they pause, when either of you leaves the Space, or when you sign out. | 1 day |
| Everything, when you delete your accountYour messages become tombstones so the conversation still reads, and their words and any position in them are gone. Nothing of yours is kept to describe you afterwards. | Destroyed with the account |
Taking a copy with you
Everything in this table that is about you can be exported from inside Ping, in one tap: You → Your data → Export my data. It arrives as GPX and GeoJSON for your location history, GeoJSON for your Places, and plain text beside JSON for your conversations — formats other software already opens, because an archive only Ping can read is not a copy of your data in any useful sense. The files are written on your phone and go wherever you send them; no copy is made anywhere else. Other people's positions are not in it, including the arrival messages they sent into a conversation you share.
Why some of it is kept at all
An arrival at a Place is worked out on the server, from positions, which is why they exist there to be worked out from. Once an arrival has been posted to a conversation it is a message, and it stays like anything else you sent — deleting your account is what takes it.