Before You Delete Coffee Meets Bagel, Read This — My Exit Story

Disclosure: Some links, like Social Catfish, are tools I’ve personally used and recommend. I may earn a small commission if you use them, at no extra cost to you.

Hey, I’m Kaia Winslow, just a 32-year-old graphic designer from Boulder, Colorado, trying to keep my life together. I’m a dad to my five-year-old fireball, Lily, and I’ve been with my girlfriend Sarah for three years now. We’ve got a golden retriever, Max, who’s basically our third kid. If you’re wondering what happens when you delete Coffee Meets Bagel or how to permanently delete your Coffee Meets Bagel account, I’m gonna lay it out for you, cause I had to figure this out the hard way. My old dating profile almost screwed up things with Sarah, and I ended up using this site called Social Catfish to clean up my mess. This ain’t a fancy blog post—I’m no writer—but it’s my story, and I hope it helps you if you’re trying to erase your own digital ghosts.

How I Got Into This Mess

So, back when I was single, I was all over dating apps. Saw Coffee Meets Bagel on Shark Tank years ago—2015, I think?—and thought it sounded cool. You know, the whole “curated matches” thing made it feel less like a meat market than Tinder. I threw up a profile, some pics from a hiking trip, and chatted with a few people. Never found “the one” there, but it was fun. Then I met Sarah at this art show in Boulder, and man, that was it. Her laugh, her vibe—she’s a schoolteacher, and she’s got this way of making everything better. We started building a life, with Lily and Max, hiking up Flagstaff Mountain, burning pancakes on Sundays, all that good stuff.

But last summer, Sarah says, half-laughing over a beer at Mountain Sun, “Kaia, what if I Googled you? Got any skeletons out there?” My stomach dropped. I hadn’t thought about my Coffee Meets Bagel profile in forever, but I knew it was still out there—pics, my job, maybe some dumb flirty messages from 2019. I wasn’t hiding anything, but it felt like a landmine. What if Sarah saw it and thought I was keeping secrets? I had to permanently delete my Coffee Meets Bagel account and make sure my past stayed in the past.

How to Permanently Delete Your Coffee Meets Bagel Account

Okay, let’s get to the nitty-gritty: how to permanently delete your Coffee Meets Bagel account. I learned the hard way that just deleting the app doesn’t do jack—your data’s still on their servers. Here’s what I did, pieced together from messing around in the app and checking their support page:

• Get Back in the App: Open Coffee Meets Bagel. If you deleted it, you gotta reinstall it from the App Store or Google Play. Annoying, but quick.
• Find Your Profile: Tap your picture in the bottom-right corner. Mine was an old hiking selfie—cringe.
• Hit Settings: On my Android, I clicked the three dots up top. iPhone folks, just look for “Settings.”
• Delete It: Scroll to the bottom, and there’s a “Delete Account” option. It says it’s permanent—your pics, chats, those “beans” they use for fake money, all gone.
• Confirm the Breakup: Pick a reason—I went with “I found someone” cause of Sarah—then hit “Delete my account” or “Done.” You’re logged out, and it’s over.
• Check Subscriptions: If you were paying for their Premium or Mini stuff, deleting the account doesn’t stop the billing. On Android, I went to Google Play, found Subscriptions, and canceled. iPhone’s the same through the App Store. Check your email to make sure it’s done.
• Ditch Facebook (If You Used It): I signed up with my email, but if you used Facebook, go to your Facebook settings, find “Apps and Websites,” and kick Coffee Meets Bagel to the curb.

Took me maybe five minutes, and my account was gone. Felt like a weight off my shoulders.

What Happens When You Delete Coffee Meets Bagel?

So, what happens when you delete Coffee Meets Bagel? Here’s what I figured out from CMB’s site and some digging:

• Your profile’s gone. No more showing up in anyone’s matches.
• Chats vanish. All those messages, even the awkward ones, get deleted.
• Your info—name, email, phone number—gets wiped from their database.
• Beans? Toast. If you spent money on them, they’re gone.

Nobody gets notified. I asked a friend who used CMB, and she said she never got a ping when someone she matched with deleted their account. Same deal for me.

It felt clean, like I’d closed that chapter. But then I hit a snag.

The Internet Doesn’t Forget

Here’s the part that freaked me out: deleting your Coffee Meets Bagel account only clears it from their servers. Your data can still live on elsewhere. I read on Reddit and some X posts that dating app info can end up on people finder sites—Spokeo, BeenVerified, places like that. Sometimes it’s from public profiles, sometimes from data leaks (like CMB’s 2018 breach where emails and names got out). I Googled myself, and boom, there’s a Social Catfish report with my old CMB pics and my job as a graphic designer. Not cool. Sarah could see that, or even my clients. As a dad to Lily, I didn’t want my single-guy days out there for the world.

When you delete your Coffee Meets Bagel account, your profile, photos, and chats are permanently removed, and you won’t show up in anyone’s matches again. But just deleting the app isn’t enough—you need to go into the app settings and choose “Delete Account.” Even then, some of your old info might still be floating around online. I used Social Catfish to help clean up the rest.

Social Catfish to the Rescue

I wasn’t sure how to fix it, but I found Social Catfish on some Reddit thread about cleaning up your online tracks. It’s a people search site, but they also help you remove your info, which was exactly what I needed. I was skeptical at first—sounded like it could be a scam—but it worked. Here’s what I did:

Check Their Site: Went to socialcatfish.com on my phone.

Search Myself: I used the reverse phone lookup tool on SocialCatfish’s official site, entered my number, and it immediately pulled up my old Coffee Meets Bagel profile details. My heart sank.

Pay for the Report: I shelled out $5.97 for a 3-day trial. Thought it’d be $5 from some posts, but whatever. Got a full list of where my data was—Spokeo, BeenVerified, some sketchy sites I’d never heard of.

Opt Out: Found a “CPRA Privacy Requests” link at the bottom of their site (works for Colorado, not just California). Filled out my name, email, and state. Didn’t need my profile link, which was good cause I didn’t have it.

Wait a Bit: Got an email in a couple days saying my data was off their site. They also helped me get it off Spokeo and others in about a week.

They said data might creep back if sites scrape it again, so I check every few months. They’ve got this DeleteMe thing for ongoing help, but I’m good for now. It was way easier than I expected—no signing up for a million sites or dealing with bots.

How This Saved My Life with Sarah

Those old CMB pics and “ready to mingle” vibes were like a ghost waiting to haunt me. Sarah, Lily, and Max are everything—think snowy trails on Sanitas, Lily’s glitter-covered art projects, Sarah laughing when I try to “dance” in the kitchen. I couldn’t let some dumb 2019 profile mess that up. What if Sarah thought I was hiding something?

So, one night, after Lily was asleep, I took Sarah out to our porch swing. Boulder’s stars were out, and I was nervous as hell. “Babe, I gotta tell you something,” I said, my voice shaky. “I had some old dating profiles, like Coffee Meets Bagel. I deleted them, and I used this Social Catfish site to make sure they’re gone from the internet.” I waited for her to be pissed, but she just leaned in, grabbed my hand, and said, “Kaia, I don’t care about some old app. I love you.” We ended up laughing about my old photos—man, that hair gel was a crime. It brought us closer, like we’d dodged a bullet together.

Final Thoughts

If you’re stressing about what happens when you delete Coffee Meets Bagel or how to permanently delete your Coffee Meets Bagel account, those steps above will get you off the app. But don’t sleep on checking people finder sites. Social Catfish saved my ass by wiping my data, and it gave me the guts to be real with Sarah. It’s not just about deleting an account—it’s about keeping your life yours. For me, it’s about Sarah, Lily, and Max, and knowing my past ain’t gonna pop up on some random website.