- Agencies with an Ads and Pixels account: your team, your clients' settings and the ad accounts you connected.
- Client businesses whose ad accounts an agency connected through us: the access your business granted and the data we read with it.
- People: anyone who signed in with Facebook or Google to connect an ad account, and visitors to a customer's website whose data reached that customer's Audience Vault.
Ads and Pixels / Data Deletion
Data Deletion
How an agency, a client business or a person can have their data deleted, what we keep, and how long it takes.
One place. Every screen.Explore below
§1
Who this page is for
§2
Ask by email
Anyone can email [email protected] with the subject "Data deletion request". A person handles it, not an automated queue. Tell us who you are (agency, client business or person), the email address or business name on the account, and what you want deleted: everything, one connected network, or one person's data in a customer's Audience Vault. We confirm the request came from you, or from someone allowed to act for the account, before deleting anything, and we confirm completion in writing.
If you are a visitor to one of our customers' websites, that business controls your data and is usually the fastest route. We will honor a request sent to us as well, and pass it to the business where required.
§3
Delete in the app
These controls exist in the app today. Anything else, including closing and deleting a whole agency account, is done by email.
- Disconnect a network. On a client's page, under Connection checklist, anyone on the agency team who can edit that client can choose Disconnect next to a connected account. The stored access tokens are deleted at once.
- Delete one person from a customer's Audience Vault. On a client's Tracking page, the Opt-out and deletion form takes the person's email or phone number. Their data is removed from the vault and their hashed identifiers go on a suppression list. Where a network's removal runs automatically (Meta, Google, Microsoft and Snapchat audience lists), the removal is sent to it for you. Where it does not yet (TikTok today), the request lists the exact steps: download the removal file, remove those people from the list in the network, then confirm it in the app; the removal stays open, and is flagged, until someone confirms it. See the Data Processing Agreement.
- Client businesses do not have a disconnect button of their own. Ask the agency that manages your account, email us, or remove our access from the network's own settings as described below.
§4
If you connected through Facebook
In Facebook, open Settings & privacy, then Settings, then Business integrations (or Apps and websites; the labels vary a little by device). Find Ads and Pixels and choose Remove. Facebook tells us straight away, and we delete the access token you gave us and your Facebook user ID for our app from every connection it was used for. For an ad account connected before we started recording Facebook user IDs, the token stops working on Facebook's side at once, and our daily connection check deletes our copy, normally within a day.
If you also send a deletion request from that screen, Facebook passes it to us with your app-scoped user ID. We delete the same things, record the request, and Facebook shows you a confirmation code and a link to check it. We never read or store your Facebook password, name, email address, friends or profile photo, only the ad accounts you chose and their advertising data. A Facebook request covers what we hold about you, the person Facebook names. It cannot reach data about other people, such as the leads a business collected with a Facebook lead form, or the business's own advertising results; those are deleted by the business, or by emailing us.
§5
What disconnecting Meta or Google does
Access tokens are stored encrypted and never shown in a browser. Disconnecting deletes them, and the platform's ID for the person who granted access, from our database in the same step, and marks the connection disconnected, so nothing more is read or changed on that account. Disconnecting in Ads and Pixels deletes our copy; it does not remove the grant on the network's side. To end it there too, remove Ads and Pixels in Facebook as above, or in your Google Account under Security, Third-party apps and services.
If you remove our access on the network first: for Meta, Facebook tells us and the tokens are deleted automatically (by our daily connection check, normally within a day, for an ad account connected before we recorded Facebook user IDs). For Google, our daily connection check finds the access gone and marks the connection Reconnect required; the now useless token is deleted when the agency disconnects it, or when you ask us by email.
§6
What gets deleted
- Access and refresh tokens for the connections covered by the request, and the platform's ID for the person who granted them.
- Connections still waiting for an ad account to be picked, in full.
- For an Audience Vault request: the person's events and profile in that customer's vault, and their entries in audiences synced to the networks (automatically, or by the confirmed manual step described above).
- For a whole account closed by email: users, clients, settings, reports, creative, leads and Audience Vault data, apart from what is listed under what we keep.
Advertising results we already imported for a business (spend, clicks, conversions) belong to that business's account, not to the person who connected it, and stay with the account until the business deletes them or closes the account.
§7
What we keep, and for how long
| Kept | Why | For how long |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices and payment records | Tax and accounting law | As long as those laws require after the account closes |
| Audit log entries | Security record of who changed what, including the deletion itself; never a token or a Facebook user ID | Permanently; the log is append-only, as described on Security |
| Suppression list | Stops a deleted person being imported again by a later sync | Indefinitely, as hashes only |
| Deletion request record | Lets you check the status with your confirmation code | Indefinitely. It holds the code, the status and the dates, plus a keyed hash of the request made from your app-scoped Facebook ID and the time Facebook sent it (it cannot be read back without our key), so the same request sent twice gets the same code. While a request is still in progress it also holds a keyed fingerprint of that ID, deleted when the request completes. Never your name, email or the ID itself |
| Political ad records | Election law, for accounts that ran political ads | At least three years after the campaign's last day |
§8
How long it takes
- Disconnecting in the app: immediate. The tokens are gone the moment it completes.
- Removing us in Facebook: immediate where we have recorded your Facebook user ID; for an ad account connected before we did, the token stops working on Facebook's side at once and our daily connection check deletes our copy, normally within a day.
- A deletion request from Facebook: processed when Facebook sends it, usually within seconds. If an ad account was connected before we started recording Facebook user IDs, our daily connection check first has to learn whose access it holds; the request shows as in progress until that check has run, normally within a day, and anything of yours it finds is deleted then.
- An email request: completed within 30 days of confirming the request, sooner where the networks' own deletion tools allow, with written confirmation. Removals sent to a network are then handled on that network's own schedule.
§9
Check a request's status
A deletion request made from Facebook gets a confirmation code. Open the link Facebook gives you, or go to adsandpixels.com/data-deletion/status?code= followed by your code. The page shows the request's status and when it was received and completed, and nothing about you.
A little more clarity
Frequently asked questions
Real answers before you make a decision.
Do I need an Ads and Pixels account to ask for deletion?
No. Anyone can email [email protected], and anyone who connected an ad account through Facebook can ask from Facebook's own settings, with no Ads and Pixels sign-in at all.
Does removing Ads and Pixels from Facebook delete my data?
Yes. Facebook tells us you removed the app, and we delete the access token you gave us and your Facebook user ID for our app at once. For an ad account connected before we started recording Facebook user IDs, the token stops working on Facebook's side straight away and our daily connection check deletes it, normally within a day. If you also send a deletion request from Facebook, you get a confirmation code you can check on this page.
Can I delete my whole agency account from inside the app?
Not yet. Email [email protected] from the account owner's address and we will close and delete it, keeping only what the law requires us to keep, as listed on this page.
What does a confirmation code show?
Only the status of that one request (in progress or completed) and when it was received and completed. It never shows your name, your Facebook ID or what we held.