Deleting your research data
Hilal supports four levels of delete for Product Research data. Pick the smallest one that fits your need.
In this guide:
- Soft-delete a single item
- Bulk-delete a category (chat / history / watchlist)
- Cascade-delete all research data
- Account closure
Soft-delete a single item
For one search, watchlist row, or chat session, use the per-row delete:
- Search: History list → ⋯ on the row → Delete.
- Watchlist row: Swipe-to-delete or ⋯ → Remove.
- Chat session: Sessions list → ⋯ → Delete.
These soft-delete the item — it disappears from your view but Hilal retains it for ~30 days before hard-deletion. To hard-delete immediately, use the bulk-delete options below.
Bulk-delete a category
Settings → Privacy → bulk-delete buttons. Three flavors:
Delete all chat history
Hard-deletes every chat session and its messages. Cannot be undone.
| Affected | Not affected |
|---|---|
| All your chat sessions | Search history |
| All message bodies in MongoDB | Watchlist |
| Inline search results in the chat | Exports (the searches themselves remain in History) |
Delete all search history
Hard-deletes every search snapshot and product result.
| Affected | Not affected |
|---|---|
All research_searches rows | Chat history (sessions remain, but inline-search references break) |
All research_products_snapshot rows | Watchlist (rows referencing deleted searches lose their source_search_uuid link) |
| Exports already generated (the files exist for their 1-hour window) |
Delete all watchlist
Hard-deletes every watchlist row, including notes.
| Affected | Not affected |
|---|---|
All research_watchlist rows | Chat history |
| All notes | Search history (searches that surfaced the products remain) |
Cascade-delete all research data
The nuclear option. Settings → Privacy → Delete all research data. Confirms with a typed-confirmation dialog (“type DELETE to confirm”); not a single-tap button.
Cascade-deletes:
- All search history.
- All watchlist items.
- All chat sessions and messages.
- All export records (and any not-yet-expired files).
- All notes.
- Your AI brief cache contributions (the shared AI briefs remain — they’re not your personal data).
- Your credit ledger entries are retained for billing-audit reasons; balance is unaffected.
What’s left after a cascade-delete:
- Your Hilal Software account (this only deletes Product Research data).
- Your credit balance.
- Audit log entries (timestamps + action types only — no content).
Account closure
To delete your entire Hilal account (not just Product Research): see Hilal Software’s account closure flow. That cascade-deletes Product Research data along with everything else.
When deletes are reflected
- Soft-deletes: instant in your view; rows are flagged but kept ~30 days.
- Bulk-deletes: instant; data is hard-deleted within minutes (for performance, the actual database row removal is sometimes async, but the user-visible effect is immediate).
- Cascade-delete: within 24 hours, all of the above is purged. Backups (encrypted, retained per Hilal’s standard retention) take longer; see Hilal’s privacy policy.
What can’t be deleted
- Audit log timestamps + action types are retained for billing and security auditing for the regulatory minimum (typically 7 years). These don’t contain content — just “user X performed action Y at time Z.”
- Deleted data in encrypted backups is retained for the backup retention period (typically 30 days). It’s not actively accessible to anyone.
- Shared AI briefs are retained because they’re product-data, not user-personal-data — the
(asin, marketplace)brief generated when you researched a product stays in cache for the next user who looks at the same product.