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Data retention policy

What we keep. How long. Why.

Sign's retention policy threads FATF Travel Rule's 7-year receipt requirement through a privacy-preserving design: we store the receipt (so you can prove you verified), never the raw transaction bytes (so your customer's transaction contents stay with you). This page is the contractual reference — any customer asking for SOC 2 / ISO 27001 evidence of retention will see exactly this table.

What Sign stores, by field

dataretentionpurposestatus
verification_id7 yearsaudit correlationkeep
exchange_id7 yearscustomer correlationkeep
status (match / mismatch)7 yearsoutcome recordkeep
risk_level7 yearsoutcome recordkeep
receipt timestamp7 yearsFATF Travel Rulekeep
Ed25519 signature + pubkey7 yearstamper evidencekeep
raw transaction bytes (raw_tx)NEVER stored long-termdecoded in-memory onlypurge after response
decoded transaction fields (to, value, etc.)90 days (debug)verification rollups onlyrolling delete
claimed intent (to, amount, description)90 days (debug)mismatch post-mortemrolling delete
SHA-256 of raw_tx (audit log payload)foreverprovable tie without plaintexthash only
application submitter IP30 daysrate-limit abuse triagerolling delete
application company / emailuntil rejected + 1 year OR until account closureKYC + supportkeep
web decoder inputs (/v1/decode, no auth)NONE — logged only as ephemeral request lineaccess logs onlynever stored

The key asymmetry: we keep enough to prove a verification happened (receipt fields + signature) but we don't keep enough to reconstruct what was verified (raw transaction). If our database is leaked or subpoena'd, an adversary gets a list of which exchanges verified what status on which date — not what was in the transactions themselves.

Why 7 years

FATF Travel Rule Recommendation 16 requires VASPs (virtual asset service providers) to retain sender + recipient + amount + timestamp for all transfers ≥ USD/EUR 1,000 for a minimum of 5 years. India's PMLA 2002 mandates 10 years. EU's AMLD5 mandates 5 years. US BSA mandates 5 years. 7 years is the practical intersection for customers with EU + US + India footprint. Customers on the Enterprise plan can opt for 10-year retention.

Right to erasure (GDPR Article 17 / DPDP Section 12)

A customer can request erasure of their application data (company, email, website, free-text use-case) on request. Erasure does NOT extend to the audit log entries tied to their verifications — those are required evidence under the same Travel Rule regime.

What gets erased:

What stays:

Erasure request: email privacy@zoza.world from the email on the application. 30-day SLA.

Physical + access control

Legal requests

See warrant canary. Any legal request that falls within the scope of the canary triggers a canary-freeze signal. Any non-gag-ordered request is reported in the quarterly transparency report. We challenge requests that appear overbroad.