Data Retention & Deletion Policy

Several Securely features let you upload a file: screenshots attached to the Message Scanner and to the Marketplace, Ticket, Identity Verification, Rental, Job and Romance checkers, property photos in the Rental checker, and evidence files attached to an investigation case. Because these are your own images and documents, we set out their handling separately.

• Where they are stored: in a private file-storage bucket operated by our hosting provider, in a folder keyed to your user account. Access is controlled at the storage layer, and the app reads a file only through a short-lived signed link generated for you. Files are not publicly browsable and have no guessable public URL.
• What is stored alongside them: a database record holding the file’s storage path, dimensions, size, content type, your optional tag or note, and any scan or case it is linked to, plus an access log entry each time the file is uploaded, viewed or deleted.
• How long they are kept: there is no automatic expiry. An uploaded file is retained for as long as you keep it — in practice, for the life of your account unless you delete it.
• Deleting a single file: removing a file from the evidence view of a scan or case deletes both the database record and the underlying file from storage immediately.
• Important — deleting a scan or case does not automatically delete its files: uploaded files are stored independently of the scan or case they are attached to, so they survive deletion of that scan or case and remain in your evidence library. To remove an image or document, delete the file itself.
• Closing your account: deleting your account automatically and permanently erases every file you uploaded. Before any account data is removed, the deletion routine sweeps your private folder in each storage bucket — both the files recorded in the database and any orphaned uploads — and deletes the underlying objects, then removes the matching database records. The sweep is restricted to files stored under your own user folder, so it cannot reach another user’s data. No manual step by us is involved, and no request to us is required.
• Backups: encrypted infrastructure backups may retain a copy of a deleted file for up to 30 days before being overwritten.
• Third-party processing: when you submit an upload for analysis, its contents are transmitted over TLS to OpenAI so the image or document can be read and assessed. OpenAI does not receive your account details. See our Subprocessors page.

Uploading is always optional. Every scanner works with pasted text alone, and we recommend redacting anything you do not need analysed — particularly bank card numbers, passwords and one-time codes — before uploading an image.