When you leave a remote platform

I have used ProNotary, then Notaron, then BlueNotary, then Proof. Each one can run the session. None of them owns the act. When you cancel the account, the platform may delete the session, or it may keep it for a period that is shorter than Texas requires. That setting is the vendor's. The duty is yours.

Download the audio-visual recording while you can still log in. Government Code § 406.108 requires a secure electronic record of the online notarization, and that record includes the recording. Section 406.108(c) keeps it for at least five years after the transaction. If the platform deletes recordings after two years, or on the day you close the account, you are short unless the file is already in a place you control. A download that lives only in the platform's inbox is not a copy you control.

The journal entry is a separate record, and it should never have lived only inside the platform. Government Code § 406.014 is the written record of the act. Section 406.014(g) keeps it until the tenth anniversary of the notarization. Five years for the recording is not ten years for the entry. Closing the account does not end either clock.

Before you leave, take both. The recording, stored where only you can open it, with a second copy that is not in a shared inbox. The journal entry, in a book you keep, with the platform, the session, and where the recording is stored. The recording itself does not go in the journal. If your only copy of the entry is a screen inside the old account, you do not have the record the statute is talking about.

I learned this by changing platforms. The act still had to go in my book. The book is not the recording, and it is not the platform. A paper journal is still legal. A journal that disappears when the subscription does is not a record you can produce in year eight.

This note is what I do before I close an account. It is not legal advice.