Deleting your creator account

“Delete my creator account” can mean two things. One is “I want to stop being a creator on Lewdden, but I’d like to keep my account so I can still buy clips and follow other creators” — that’s a step-down. The other is “I want my entire Lewdden account gone — creator side and fan side, the whole thing” — that’s a full delete. This guide covers both, the differences from pausing or closing your storefront, the wind-down sequence, what we’re legally required to keep, and how long the whole thing takes.

1. Three options — pick the one you actually want

Before we go further, make sure you’ve got the right article. There are three different kinds of “exit” on Lewdden and they overlap less than people expect:

• Pause the storefront — your storefront is hidden from search and listings, but your subscribers keep access and you can come back any time. Reversible. Covered in Pausing or closing your storefront.
• Step down from creator — your storefront comes down for good, but your fan/buyer side stays. You can still buy clips, follow creators, subscribe to others, top up your wallet. This is the article for that.
• Delete the whole account — both the creator side and the fan side go. You sign out for the last time. Also covered in this article (§4).

If you’re not sure, the step-down is usually what people actually want — keeps your purchase history intact, lets you stay a fan, and is easy to reverse if you ever change your mind.

2. Step down from creator — keep your fan account

Stepping down does these things, in order:

1. Your storefront is hidden immediately so no new customers can land.
2. Active subscriptions to your store are stopped at their next renewal date — existing subscribers keep access for the period they’ve already paid for, then those subscriptions just end. No mid-cycle refund is needed because no mid-cycle service is being denied.
3. Any custom orders or physical orders still in flight are either delivered (if you’re wrapping them up) or refunded to the buyer with a short courtesy note. We agree which on the support ticket.
4. Your final monthly payout runs at the next 1st-of-the-month export. The full balance you’ve earned lands in your IBAN. We don’t shortcut this — letting it run on the normal schedule keeps your bank statement clean.
5. The vendor role on your account is removed. Your store-manager dashboard disappears from the sidebar. Your storefront page returns a 404.
6. Your clips, feed posts, and live VODs come down from public listings. The underlying media files are removed from our storage shortly after.
7. Your account itself stays open as a normal fan account. Same email, same password, same wallet, same purchase history, same following list. Sign-in works as before.

To request a step-down, open a ticket under Account admin at Contacting support with the subject “Step down from creator — keep fan account”. Tell us:

• Reason (one line — not required, but it helps us improve the platform).
• What to do with custom or physical orders still in flight: deliver each (if you’re wrapping them up) or refund.
• Whether you want subscribers notified via a final feed-post or message before the storefront disappears.

From start to “vendor role removed” the step-down typically takes 4–6 weeks because of the payout cycle. The storefront itself comes down on day one.

3. What gets kept after a step-down (and why)

Even though your storefront is gone, some records about your time as a creator are kept on the platform:

• Sales / payout / financial records. Required by EU tax and AML rules for 7+ years after the transaction. We literally aren’t allowed to delete these on request, regardless of GDPR. If a tax authority audits us in year 5, those records have to be retrievable.
• Identity-verification status on the application record (status, your first/last name, decision timestamp). Kept on the closed application for audit. The document images live with the verification provider per their own retention policy.
• Aggregate dispute / moderation events on your historical account — e.g. if a clip was removed for policy reasons, that fact stays in the moderation history even if the clip file itself is gone. This is a safeguard so that a creator with a previous-account history of serious violations cannot just step down and re-apply with a clean slate.
• Order receipts buyers can still see in their /my-account/orders/. Each buyer paid for those clips and has a right to see what they paid for. The buyer-side view stays; the storefront page does not.

None of this is shared publicly. The retained records are visible to Lewdden‘s own compliance / accounting / moderation teams only.

4. Delete the whole account — fan side included

Choose this option only if you also want your buyer account gone. After the delete, you cannot sign in. Your purchase history disappears from your /my-account/. Your follow list is dropped. Your wallet balance — if any — is refunded to your last payout IBAN before the account closes.

The sequence is the same as the step-down (storefront hides → renewals end → in-flight orders settle → final payout runs → vendor role and account closed), with two additions at the end:

7. Your fan-side history — wallet, orders, subscriptions you have as a buyer, follows, messages you sent to other creators — is closed off. Your view of /my-account/ is removed. Other creators’ view of their threads with you persists for a normal communication-record period; your messages within those threads are redacted to a “former user” placeholder.
8. Your sign-in email is released. You (or anyone with that email) could in principle register a fresh Lewdden account with it later. (We don’t recommend it — see §7.)

To request a full delete, open the same support ticket but use the subject “Close storefront and delete account”. Same four questions as §2, plus:

• Confirm the IBAN for the final payout (so any remaining wallet balance + earnings can be sent to a bank that’s still yours).
• Confirm you want fan-side history deleted too. We treat this as a stronger signal than “step down” — once it’s actioned past a certain point it’s irreversible.

5. What “delete” doesn’t mean (and what we’d like you to know going in)

It’s tempting to read “delete my account” as “every trace of me, anywhere, instantly gone”. That’s not what we (or any compliant EU platform) can offer. Honest version:

• “Delete” doesn’t reach financial records. Per §3, those are kept 7+ years. This is non-negotiable.
• “Delete” doesn’t reach the verification provider. The provider (Veriff) holds your document images on their own retention schedule under their own GDPR contract. We forward the deletion request to them; they action it under their policy.
• “Delete” doesn’t recall content from buyers’ downloads. If a buyer paid for and downloaded one of your clips before you closed, the file on their machine is theirs. We can take down the storefront listing; we can’t reach into someone else’s computer.
• “Delete” doesn’t remove the fact that you were a creator from our internal audit trail. See §3 (last bullet). This prevents bad-actor re-applications.
• Anonymised vestiges may stay in shared surfaces (e.g. a moderator’s note that thread #X had a “former user” sender, kept for thread coherence). Your display name is replaced with the placeholder; the content of your messages on your side is removed.

If any of these is a deal-breaker for you, see §6 on the formal GDPR erasure path — but the platform’s answer to “delete me” includes the items above by design, not by accident.

6. The formal GDPR erasure path

If you want to invoke your GDPR Right to Erasure (Article 17) formally — separately from, or alongside, the operational close above — say so on the support ticket. The legal-team workflow then runs in parallel:

• We compile the list of every system on which we hold your data — Lewdden‘s own records, our media storage, our email-delivery provider, Netfield (the merchant of record), and the verification provider.
• For each system, we either erase your data on request, or document the legal basis on which we have to retain it (financial / AML / dispute-resolution).
• We send you a written confirmation of what was erased, what was retained, and on which legal basis, typically within 30 calendar days of the request.
• If you’re unhappy with the outcome you can escalate to your national data-protection authority — in Germany the BfDI, in other EU countries the equivalent.

The full data picture (what we hold, who we share it with, retention windows) is in Your data on Lewdden §1–§4. Read that first if you want the complete context before filing.

7. Before you send the ticket — checklist

Things that are awkward to fix after the fact:

• Download anything you want to keep. Your own clips, your VOD library, your sales-report CSV. Once the storefront comes down, the source files come with it.
• Confirm your IBAN. If your bank has changed since your last payout, update it via Changing your IBAN or bank account before sending the close request. The final payout will go to whatever IBAN is on file when the export runs.
• Tell your subscribers via a final feed post or broadcast if that’s appropriate. They’ll appreciate the heads-up rather than just a “subscription ended” notification a few weeks later.
• Save your sales totals. The Sales report exports to CSV — handy for your own bookkeeping after the storefront is gone.
• Decide on the open custom orders. Each of them has a buyer waiting. Wrap them up if you can, or be ready to refund. We don’t action a close while there are unsettled obligations on the storefront.

8. Reapplying as a creator later

Both step-down and full-delete are technically reversible — you can apply to be a creator again on a new (or existing-buyer) account. But:

• Reapplying after a step-down is the easier path. Same account, you’d re-submit through the creator application flow at Creator onboarding. The verification provider keeps your prior record; if your details haven’t changed, the re-verification step is usually fast.
• Reapplying after a full delete is starting over. New email, new account, new verification, new storefront, no carry-over of subscribers or sales history. You may also hit our duplicate-account checks since some of your historic data (verification fingerprint, IBAN if the same) is still in the audit record from before.
• If your previous account was closed for policy reasons (a moderation-actioned close, not a self-requested one), a reapplication may be declined. The audit trail in §3 exists precisely so this scenario stays consistent.

9. FAQ

“Can I delete my creator side immediately, today, without waiting 4–6 weeks?” The storefront comes down on day one. The wait is for the payout cycle so you actually receive what you’ve earned. We can pay out by separate one-off SEPA transfer to compress the timeline — say so on the ticket if you need to be fully done within a week or two.

“What if I owe money — open custom orders or refunds?” We don’t close while there are unsettled buyer obligations. The ticket conversation covers what each open obligation should resolve to (deliver / refund / cancel) and we sign off on the close only when the obligations are resolved.

“Can I get my data export before I close?” Yes — and we recommend it. File a GDPR Right of Access request first (the same support ticket, separate subject), get the structured export, then send the close request. See Your data on Lewdden §4.

“What about my buyers — do they get refunded?” Active subscribers: no mid-cycle refund (they keep access for the period they’ve already paid for). One-off clip buyers: no refund (digital goods, already delivered). Pending custom-order buyers: refund if you can’t deliver. Pending physical-order buyers: refund if you can’t ship.

“Is the close visible to anyone else?” No public announcement. Your subscribers see their access end at the next renewal. Your followers see your profile and feed disappear. There’s no system-wide “creator X has left” post.

“Can someone else take over my storefront?” No — accounts aren’t transferrable. The new owner has to sign up fresh, verify themselves, and build their own subscriber base.

“What if I can’t log in? My email is dead, I forgot my password, etc.” Reach out from any alternate contact you have (e.g. a buyer-side account if it’s a different email, or a friend’s account, or simply email [email protected] directly). Identity-proof yourself via verification re-confirmation. Don’t share passwords with anyone — support never asks for them.

Related

• Pausing or closing your storefront — the same close flow, framed around “I want a break” vs “I want out”.
• Your data on Lewdden — full data-retention picture and your GDPR rights.
• Closing your account — the fan-side equivalent (for users who are buyers only, not creators).
• Changing your IBAN or bank account — update this before you ask for the close.
• Contacting support — where the close ticket goes.