# What is MessageBird’s data retention strategy?

MessageBird will either return or delete (or both) as instructed by the customer. However, in compliance with the applicable laws and regulations, we only retain personal data when we have a specified purpose that allows us to keep it. Our legal obligations include: 

* Detection and prevention of misuse of MessageBird's services and products (such as fraud, phishing and other fraudulent behaviour), for which account holder data, traffic data and content data are retained for 6 months after the electronic communication; 
* Financial purposes; obligations from the Dutch tax authorities and EU MOSS, for which invoices and personal data related to it are retained for 7-10 years; 
* Proof of exercising rights has been fulfilled. MessageBird has to be able to show that requests made have been fulfilled based on the Dutch General Administrative Law Act (Algemene Wet Bestuursrecht), for which confirmation emails and closed tickets are kept for 5 years; 
* Provision of the services, for which account holder data is retained for as long as the service is used.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.bird.com/connectivity-platform/data-governance-and-security/what-is-messagebirds-data-retention-strategy.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.