Every couple of months I get the “Deletion of your AnkiWeb decks” email, and I go through the routine of studying a card in the Android app in order to avoid account deletion.
I use Anki relatively rarely (usually when I’m training for job interviews) but the cards I’ve created over the years are valuable to me, and I would hate to lose them one day by missing one of those emails.
I was wondering if there is (or could be) any other way to avoid that fate.
For example, I’d be happy to pay for this service.
Alternatively, what if all my cards are merely text, and their collective size is negligible? Could a size threshold be introduced such that any accounts below that threshold are safe?
Just thinking out loud.
Regardless, thanks for Anki! It’s been an invaluable tool.
To prevent losing your files if you miss such an email, completely sync your account to the Anki client, make a .colpkg backup and save that at a safe location. You can easily sync that .colpkg back to your account, even if the data inside of your account had been wiped. Also see AnkiWeb account removal - Anki FAQs.
But causing unneccessary syncs increases the server usage, which is bad for the entire community. Aside from the fact that you’re essentially assuming that OP is booting up their computer regularily. E.g. my linux computer hasn’t been rebooted in over 94 days, meaning your suggestion wouldn’t work if OP is like me.
It might seem like that often, but it’s after 5 months, to give you time before your data is removed at the 6-month mark.
We prioritize making this free resource available to active learners, who need it in order to sync progress between their devices, so we delete the data from accounts in our system that aren’t being used for syncing or studying. AnkiWeb simply isn’t suitable for long-term storage of your inactive collection, and if you’re not using Anki regularly anymore, this is going to happen again every 5-6 months.
Our data policy (as Anon_0000 indicated) only affects the data on our servers. You still have a local copy of your collection on at least one device, so you can choose to ignore that email and allow your data to be removed from our servers. When you decide to start using Anki again, you can upload your collection to AnkiWeb and resume syncing.
Since you know you’re taking long breaks from studying, make sure your device is fully synced. And I second the recommendation that you save your collection in at least 2 places, to protect against device loss/failure.
I think it’s the default! I had no idea this was configurable, but my client syncs on startup.
The sync feature is there to be used; I doubt syncing a typical collection twice a day (start the app, sync, add some cards and do some review, sync) is going to tank the servers. We are just doing it automatically instead of manually.
But yes, if OP’s collection is massive or they plan on reopening the app hundreds of times a day, they should reconsider.
I trust OP to know how often they reboot their computer and determine if this solution works for them
You should consider rebooting more often though. I assume you know what you’re doing, but if you’ve installed a lot of kernel modules, messed with service config, etc. in those 94 days, your startup process may be borked and you have no idea!
