Certificate of destruction

When an organization is permanently deleted, after its 30-day recovery window closes, CensusIO issues a Certificate of Destruction: a signed record that the data was destroyed, for your compliance and your own files.

Who gets it

The certificate goes to the owner who deleted the organization. It is tied to that account, because the organization itself no longer exists.

Get your certificate

The certificate appears on your dashboard, under Destruction certificates, once the organization has been permanently deleted. Choose Download to save it as a PDF.

What it contains

• The organization’s name and id.
• When deletion was requested and when the data was destroyed.
• A count of what was removed: survey types, records, lab samples, locations, list values, reference organizations, collectors, and activity-log entries.
• A content hash (SHA-256) of the certificate’s facts, and a signature (HMAC-SHA256).

Why the hash and signature

CensusIO self-signs the certificate. The signature covers every fact in it, so any later change to the document (a different date, an altered count) no longer matches and is detectable. If you need us to confirm a certificate is genuine, we can re-verify it.

Published public records are not part of it

If you published records to the public data layer, those are kept (and permanent), but de-identified: your organization’s name is removed. The certificate covers the data that was destroyed, not those public records, which stand on as an anonymous public contribution.

Related

• Deleting your organization
• Permanence