Data Retention Policy

Unsaved intake drafts are temporary. Drafts created from uploads or manual intake normally expire after about 7 days if they are not saved into a case workspace.

A scheduled cleanup job removes expired unsaved drafts and then removes private upload files that are no longer referenced by a saved case or active draft.

Incomplete anonymous sessions with no case, draft, purchase, generated document, reminder, or other value-bearing record may be cleaned after about 30 days.

Uploaded summonses, complaints, and related court-paper images are kept in private storage while Answered needs them for extraction, review, scan recovery, or the saved case workspace.

After successful scan workflows, Answered attempts to delete source upload images that are no longer needed and remove their storage pointers from the case record.

If an upload is abandoned before a case is saved, orphaned private upload images are eligible for scheduled cleanup after at least 24 hours, as long as no saved case or active draft still references them.

Saved case details and generated self-help packets remain available in your account workspace unless you delete the case or ask Answered to delete/export account data.

Deleted cases may remain recoverable for a limited period. After the permanent-delete or soft-delete cleanup window, Answered removes the case row and linked upload paths where available.

Payment, fraud-prevention, support, security, and backup records may remain after a case deletion when needed for legal, accounting, security, refund, dispute, or operational reasons.

Account records are kept while your account exists and for a reasonable period afterward when needed to operate support, security, fraud-prevention, deletion, export, and audit workflows.

Stripe handles card details. Answered does not receive or store your full card number. Answered may keep payment status, product, amount, Stripe customer/session/payment identifiers, refund/dispute state, and fulfillment metadata needed to prove what was purchased and unlock access.

Payment and fulfillment records are generally retained as long as needed for receipts, tax/accounting, refunds, chargebacks, fraud prevention, operational audits, and legal compliance.

Support emails and operational rescue notes are kept as long as reasonably needed to resolve the issue, preserve context for later follow-up, and maintain abuse, fraud-prevention, and quality records.

Application logs, error monitoring, and privacy-safe analytics are kept for reliability, security, and product-quality purposes. These systems should not contain raw lawsuit papers, full document text, card numbers, Social Security numbers, or full account numbers.

Backups may retain deleted information for a limited backup lifecycle before aging out. Backup deletion is not always immediate because backups are designed for disaster recovery and integrity.

You can request access, correction, deletion, or export by contacting support@ellasid.com. Include the account email you used with Answered so we can verify the request.

Deletion is subject to reasonable limits. Answered may retain records needed for payment disputes, chargebacks, refunds, taxes, fraud prevention, security, legal compliance, abuse prevention, or to complete a transaction you requested.

Export requests are handled in a reasonable, human-readable format where possible. Some operational logs, aggregated analytics, and internal security records may not be exportable in the same format as case documents.