How long a dating app keeps your ban on file

Dating apps keep the record of a ban for years, and several publish exactly how many. Bumble’s retention table says it may keep details of certain blocked members “for up to 15 years, depending on the seriousness of harm, to prevent them from rejoining as a member”. Badoo, in the same corporate group, keeps the block record six years, and fifteen in severe cases. Hinge holds a banned account for up to two years, and holds the identifiers that stop you re-registering with no time limit at all.

None of that is neutral filing, and the documents do not pretend it is. The purpose is written into the clause, in the platform’s own words: the file exists to stop you coming back.

There is a second thing to take from it, and it is the useful one. If the file is still there, something can still be asked of it.

What each app actually publishes

Seventeen of the twenty-four apps we read publish something about what happens to the data on a banned account. Twelve give an actual period. Two say expressly that they keep it with no end date. Three give the purpose and no number at all. Here is what is written down, with the stated purpose in the platform’s own framing.

The spread is the first thing: fifteen years at one end, twelve months at the other, for what is nominally the same decision.

The second is that a ban is a different, longer retention state than a deletion almost everywhere the numbers exist. Tinder’s privacy policy sets “a safety retention window of three months following account closure or one year following an account ban”. Hinge uses the identical sentence and swaps one year for “up to two years”. BLK uses it too, so a banned BLK account is held four times longer than one the member closed themselves.

The silence matters as much. Grindr’s terms say it “has no obligation to retain a record of Your account”, while its privacy policy confirms it does keep account information, a device identifier and log data for banned accounts. Match.com, HER, Zoosk, EliteSingles and SilverSingles publish no ban-specific period, so read that as unknown rather than short. Facebook Dating is the one to watch: Meta suspends deletion where it would restrict its ability to investigate a breach, which by definition describes every banned account, and gives the duration only as case by case.

They say why, and it is not record-keeping

Retention clauses are usually dull because the reason is dull: tax, audit, a regulator. These are not. Line the ban clauses up and the same purpose comes back in different corporate voices.

• Hinge, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish. All three carry the same Match Group wording. Alongside the timed windows they keep “data necessary to prevent members who were banned from opening a new account” for as long as it is needed. No number attaches to that part.
• happn. The most operationally frank of the lot. When a member is banned the account “becomes inactive” and the information “is retained in an active database for 24 months, in order cross check it with information provided with new registrations”. Not archived. Active, and read against every new signup.
• The League and Boo. Neither gives a period. The League retains “such information as we deem in our sole discretion may be necessary to ensure that User does not open a new account”, and Boo says “personal information may need to be kept to prevent a user who was banned for violating behavior or security issues from opening a new account”.
• Bumble. Its fifteen-year row is a severity tier, not a default. The length depends “on the seriousness of harm”, and Bumble does not publish what falls into which tier.

That is a design brief, not a filing cabinet, and it explains why a new signup dies within days on a different phone number. The record is not a memory of you. It is a live comparison set, and happn says so in those words. The mechanics are in how device bans actually work.

What is actually in the file

Retention tables are more revealing than terms of service, because a table has to name the fields. Bumble’s row for blocking decisions expressly includes Device ID and IP address alongside name, email address, mobile number, cardholder name, payment type and member ID. That is device-level and payment-level ban infrastructure, disclosed in a privacy schedule rather than in the terms.

Hily is the most specific of any app we read. It keeps a hashed email address, IP address, profile IDs across Hily, Facebook, Snapchat and Apple, and a device identifier for five years, and says the point is stopping a banned user registering again. Grindr keeps “some account information, a device identifier (i.e., IDFV and Android ID), and limited log information” tied to banned accounts and devices.

Then the biometric layer. OkCupid and Plenty of Fish both publish that photo-verification audit images, the pass or fail result and the estimated age are “saved until 90 days after your account is closed (or 1 year if the account is banned)”. Four times longer, for the same face, because of how the account ended.

Deleting the account does not clear the ban

This is the hope most people arrive with, and three companies close it off in writing. Badoo’s help centre says that if a profile has been blocked, “we need to keep some basic account data to enforce the block”. Hily warns in advance that “if your Hily profile is banned, a data erasure request will not release you from prohibition to use Hily Services”. Boo says data is kept specifically to stop a banned user opening a new account.

An erasure request aimed at the ban therefore has a structural problem: the data you want deleted is the data they rely on to keep you out, and safety retention is the ground they cite when they refuse. It also destroys your own case file while leaving theirs intact. Both sides are written out in does deleting your account remove the ban and the erasure guide.

Six months to appeal, years on the file

Put the retention table beside the appeal deadlines and the asymmetry is the whole story. Where a dating app publishes an appeal deadline at all, it is six months. Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, The League, BLK, Bumble and Badoo all give six months from the date of the action being contested. happn gives six months for its internal complaint and Breeze six months to complain. Hily publishes six months for EU and UK users only, and Coffee Meets Bagel everywhere except the United States, where it publishes nothing.

So on Bumble you have six months to argue and up to fifteen years of file. On Tinder, six months and a year. On happn, six months to complain and twenty-four months of your details in an active database, checked against every new registration.

Hinge is the odd one out in both directions. It publishes no appeal deadline anywhere: not in the US or UK terms, not in the community guidelines, not in the help centre. It also publishes one of the longer windows, up to two years, plus the identifiers with no limit.

Why retention is the reason an access request works

This is the useful part, and it follows from everything above. A subject access request only returns something if something is still held. The platforms have published, in their own schedules, that the file on a banned account lives for one, two, five, six or fifteen years. That is their commitment, not our estimate, and it is why the access route stays open long after the in-app appeal button has gone grey.

Three things worth being precise about.

• Access is not erasure. An access request under GDPR Article 15 asks what they hold. An erasure request asks them to destroy it. Only the first builds you a case, and only the second can be refused on safety-retention grounds and still leave you banned.
• It is your right, and an agent can send it for you. A subject access request is exercised by the data subject and may be sent by an agent holding your signed authority, under ordinary agency law. It is not GDPR Article 80 or DSA Article 86 representation, both of which are reserved to not-for-profit bodies and neither of which a paid service can claim. Badoo, Bumble, BLK, HER, Hinge, Grindr, Feeld, Hily, eharmony, Coffee Meets Bagel and EliteSingles all carry an authorised-agent clause, and OkCupid and The League carry one in a California privacy addendum. Those clauses cover privacy requests, not ban appeals.
• Send it to the right box. Badoo and Bumble publish in-house data protection officers at [email protected] and [email protected], happn at [email protected], Muzz at [email protected], and Feeld names [email protected]. BLK, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, The League and Tinder outsource the UK and Swiss representative role to Prighter, 20 Mortlake High Street, London SW14 8JN. SilverSingles staffs neither role in house but routes EU, UK and Swiss requests through Prighter as well. Boo, Raya and Match.com publish no data protection officer and no EU or UK representative at all.

Now the honest limit. Hinge states in its help centre that it does not respond to inquiries about bans, and that “ban reason information is not included in data export requests”. On Hinge the export will not hand you the verdict. What it can show is the shape of the file: identifiers held, dates, attached content, and whether an action was recorded as automated. Hinge’s own 2025 EU filing reports 445,488 of 633,534 moderation measures taken solely by automated means.

On timing, the order matters. File the platform appeal first and inside the published window, because that is the clock that closes. Send the access request in parallel: it runs on its own timetable and does not consume the appeal window. Do not file an erasure request while a case is live. And in the EU three certified out-of-court bodies publish scope that covers dating apps. Germany’s Platform Control is named in the Commission’s register for Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid; Italy’s ADR Center names Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, Badoo and OkCupid on its intake form, and Greece’s ADR Point names Bumble, Hinge and Tinder on its own. All three are free to you and none of them can bind the platform. Platform Control takes no evidence of its own and decides on what the parties put in front of it, so the written case is the entire product, and it has a hard one-year cut-off from the date of the action. ADR Center gives you twelve months and ADR Point states no deadline, but both want you to have complained inside the app first. That is set out in the Article 21 guide. A refusal is material for it, not an ending.

Where the file thins out, and where it vanishes

Long retention is the rule, not a guarantee, and in three places the evidence really does expire. Coffee Meets Bagel deletes twelve months after a ban. Feeld deletes one year after a ban for anyone banned on or after 13 October 2025, while accounts banned before that date are held until the member asks. eharmony publishes no ban-specific schedule and reserves the right to remove account information on termination, so capture what you have before you appeal. Grindr is a fourth case of a different shape: its terms disclaim any obligation to retain a record of your account, while its privacy policy says it keeps the ban identifiers anyway.

Your own evidence goes first, and faster than theirs. Plenty of Fish removes conversations older than thirty days from the inbox as housekeeping, and its own reporting article tells members to screenshot key conversations before blocking anyone. The company’s retention schedule is not your retention schedule.

One more, and it is the cheapest five seconds in this subject. At Badoo, Bumble and Breeze the appeal form has no standalone published URL: it exists only as a link inside the enforcement notification. Dismiss that notification without screenshotting it and the primary route is gone, however long the file lives.

If you would rather not assemble this yourself, that is the job. We draft every route your app has, you press send on the one place only you can reach from inside your own account, and we file the rest in your name. Prices are $69, $149 and $299, on the pricing page. Not taken on = refunded. What happens after filing is the platform’s decision, and we will not pretend otherwise. Start with the free check.

Questions people actually ask

How long does Bumble keep a ban on file?

Up to fifteen years for some cases. Bumble’s retention table says it may keep details of certain blocked members “for up to 15 years, depending on the seriousness of harm, to prevent them from rejoining as a member”. The length is tied to severity, so fifteen years is the top of the range rather than the standard case, and Bumble does not publish what falls into which tier.

How long does Badoo keep a block on file?

Six years, and fifteen in severe cases. Badoo says it keeps some account information and a record of the behaviour that led to the block for evidential purposes, and its help centre adds that it needs to keep basic account data specifically to enforce the block. Badoo and Bumble are in the same corporate group, and the numbers line up.

How long does Hinge keep a banned account?

Up to two years for the account data, and with no time limit at all for the identifiers that stop you re-registering. Hinge’s privacy policy sets a safety retention window of three months following an account closure or up to two years following an account ban, and separately keeps data necessary to prevent banned members opening a new account for as long as it is needed.

How long does Tinder keep a ban on file?

One year following a ban, against three months for an account you close yourself. That is the published safety retention window, and it is the same sentence used across several Match Group brands with the number changed. Tinder publishes no device-ban or payment-instrument-ban statement anywhere, which is a gap rather than a reassurance.

Which apps do not publish a retention period at all?

Match.com, HER, Zoosk, EliteSingles, SilverSingles and Facebook Dating publish no ban-specific period. Boo, Grindr and The League publish a retention purpose without a number, and The League says openly that it keeps whatever it deems necessary at its sole discretion. No number does not mean a short one, and it is not safe to read it that way.

Does deleting my account delete the ban?

No, and three companies say so in advance. Badoo’s help centre says it keeps basic account data to enforce the block. Hily says an erasure request will not release you from the prohibition on using its service. Boo says data is kept specifically to stop a banned user opening a new account. The fuller answer is in our page on deleting the account.

Will a GDPR erasure request lift the ban?

It is contested, and it is the wrong tool for this job. Platforms refuse erasure of the ban record on safety-retention grounds, which is the exact ground their published schedules are built on, and a successful erasure destroys your own file while theirs survives. The refusal can be put to a data protection authority. The erasure guide works through what actually happens.

Can I ask to see what the file says?

Yes. A subject access request under GDPR Article 15 asks what they hold about you, and the retention schedules on this page are the reason there is usually something to return. It is your right as the data subject and can be sent by an agent holding your signed authority. It is not GDPR Article 80 or DSA Article 86 representation, both of which are reserved to not-for-profit bodies.

Will the data export tell me why I was banned?

Not on Hinge. Its help centre states that it does not respond to inquiries requesting further details about bans and that ban reason information is not included in data export requests. Other apps vary and most do not publish a position either way. What an export can still show is which identifiers are held, the dates, the attached content, and whether the action was recorded as automated.

Does the record expire if I wait long enough?

Waiting is the one strategy the published schedules rule out, because every timed window is longer than the appeal window that runs alongside it. On Bumble the gap is six months against up to fifteen years. And several apps attach no expiry at all to the anti-recidivism identifiers, so there is nothing to wait out. How long a Tinder ban lasts covers the clocks in detail.

Does uninstalling and reinstalling reset the device identifier?

No, and two apps publish the mechanism. Boo says the identifier associated with your device may most likely be continuously stored after uninstall and that on reinstall it may be able to re-associate it. Raya says the identifier will continue to be stored and that on reinstall it will be able to re-associate it. Both statements sit in the privacy policy rather than the terms.

Is it legal to keep my data for fifteen years?

Genuinely unresolved, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Data protection law requires that personal data is kept no longer than necessary for the purpose, and the platforms answer that the purpose is user safety, which is a recognised one. Whether fifteen years is proportionate to it has not been settled, and the route for testing it is a complaint to your data protection authority rather than anything that happens inside the app.