‎Disposition of recordings on close of account | SimpliSafe Support Home
 
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Wednesday, September 29th, 2021 10:09 PM

Disposition of recordings on close of account

I contacted support but have heard nothing back in two days, so figured I'd check here. We have sold our house, and are leaving the SimpliSafe system with the new owners. I understand that all I need to do is close our account, then the new owner can register a new account from the serial number of the Simplisafe base station. That's all well and good. I also understand that I can delete recordings one at a time. However, while the Open House was going on, hundreds of videos were recorded.
I have two questions:
1) When I delete my account, will that disassociate the recordings from the Simplisafe? If they're tied to the base station serial number, that could be a problem.
2) If they are not disassociated, is there a way to delete ALL of the recordings in one fell swoop?

thanks!

725 Messages

3 years ago

This is an excellent question. And should be added to an FAQ somewhere about closing your account and/or deleting clips before they expire at 30 days.

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

3 years ago

Hi paul709,

To start off, I want to clarify that currently there is no way to manually delete videos. But yes, they are removed after 30 days automatically.

As for when you're passing your system on to a new user - they'll be creating a totally brand new account that isn't connected with yours. Video footage is bound to your service account, so once that's properly Canceled, all the videos will be removed all at once, and no one can access them anymore.

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security

725 Messages

3 years ago

@JohnnyM

To start off, I want to clarify that currently there is no way to manually delete videos.


From https://support.simplisafe.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052613931-Can-I-delete-recordings-from-my-timeline-

Recordings will be automatically deleted after 30 days. To manually delete recordings from your timeline:

1. Click on the event in your timeline so that the video preview expands
2. Click on the video preview to show the whole video
3. Beneath the video you will see a list of all recordings
4. Tap the three dot menu next to the recording you'd like to delete
5. Choose Delete Video


Can you please clarify your answer in light of this support article?

6 Messages

To echo Worthing's comments, I have deleted videos manually many times. I don't understand the disconnect here regarding that matter, unless we're to infer that when one manually deletes a video, it isn't really deleted, but just hidden from the user. That would be unfortunate. The greater concern is with the inconsistent answer regarding manual deletion, it incurs skepticism regarding the accuracy of the second answer. Typically, in databases, when one datapoint is deleted, it doesn't inherently remove associated data - the data remains stored, just disassociated from X datapoint. Which means the data could be re-associated, whether by accident, or due to a bug, or who knows what all. In this case, the device is remaining at the address on file, with only the billing information changing - and in this case, it would be changing to the same address. I could easily see a reassociation occurring based upon address and serial number.


It's not a world-shaking issue, the recordings are entirely benign, just people walking through an open house. But genuine clarity would be desireable.

725 Messages

3 years ago

It's not a world-shaking issue, the recordings are entirely benign, just people walking through an open house. But genuine clarity would be desireable.


In your instance, this may be true. That doesn't make it true for everyone so I think it's important that SimpliSafe tell us, in detail, exactly what data they keep, for how long, etc. as well as clarify what exactly happens when we "manually delete" videos.

To your (very well explained!) point, is the data gone, or is a pointer in a system to the data gone but other pointers remain in other systems? I'd love to see the details for people who are particularly privacy minded written out in a support document.

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

3 years ago

Hi all,

You got me there. I missed the update that the feature was already available, though I did know it had been close to release earlier this year. So yes, you can indeed delete videos from your timeline, and they are immediately no longer accessible.

There is, however, no way to mass-delete. But again, those videos are tied to your account (i.e. locked under your username and password), and subsequent users of the system and/or your cameras would have zero access to them.

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security
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