Hi Benjamin,

Thanks for reaching out! I hope this email finds you well. This is ██████ with Robinhood Support and I am here to follow up on your last message about data deletion and account policies.

I believe that there's a bit of a misunderstanding over deactivation and closure. The words 'deactivation' and 'closure' can have different meanings at different firms, but at Robinhood they can used interchangeably as it's the same process. Even with this, all brokerage firms still fall under the same federal regulations that require these set timelines. An account is deactivate or 'closed' and then the timeline that allows complete data deletion begins from that point.

We do have mechanisms for permanently deleting information that we've been required to retain on accounts. The process begins after you deactivate/close the account. We’re required to retain certain records for regulatory and legal reasons, so some information is kept for up to 5 years after your account is deactivated/closed to comply with those obligations. This is can seen in our Privacy Policy.

I understand that these aren't necessarily the answers that you're looking for, but we're required to follow our federal regulators guidelines and cannot break from their set rules on this.

Thanks for your patience here, my friend. I appreciate you having been a Robinhood customer, so please feel free to reach out should you have further questions!

Sincerely,
██████