We never train on them, sell them, or look at them. Here’s the whole policy, written for humans.
Last updated: July 17, 2026 · Applies to the Paperlock iPhone app and getpaperlock.com
Everything, essentially. Your documents, their pages, the text Paperlock read from them, and everything Paperlock learned about them live in an encrypted database on your device, protected by iOS Data Protection. The app is locked behind Face ID or your passcode, and its contents are hidden in the app switcher.
There is one optional exception, and it’s in your hands: iCloud sync. If you turn it on, an encrypted copy of your vault is kept in your personal iCloud account so your documents can follow you to a new phone. That copy lives under your Apple ID, protected by Apple’s iCloud security — it never passes through or lands on our servers, and we cannot see it. Turn sync off and the choice is reversed; your documents leave your device only if you want them to.
If you delete the app, the vault on your device is deleted with it (a synced copy stays in your iCloud until you remove it there). We can’t recover any of it, because we never had it.
Paperlock’s “reading” and question-answering are powered by our servers. When the app reads a new document or answers a question, it sends the necessary images or text to us over an encrypted connection. Our servers:
Requests are identified by an anonymous installation ID — a random number your app made up when you installed it. It isn’t linked to your name, email, phone number, or Apple ID, because we never collect any of those.
The table below is the same story as the rest of this page, but per action, so you can check the one you care about. “Leaves your phone” means data sent to Paperlock’s servers over an encrypted connection; nothing on this list is ever stored there.
| What you do | Runs on your phone | Leaves your phone | What our servers and the AI provider see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding document candidates in Photos | Yes, entirely. Apple’s on-device Vision framework looks for text and document shapes; the photo library is read, never written. | Nothing. | Nothing. |
| Scanning or importing a document | Yes. Straightening, cropping and the first on-device text recognition (Apple Vision) happen locally; the pages are stored encrypted on the phone. | Nothing at this step. | Nothing. |
| Reading a document (type, sender, dates, amounts, expiry) | The request is prepared on the phone. | Downscaled JPEGs of up to 4 pages plus the on-device text, sent once. | Our server passes them to the AI provider (OpenAI) to return structured fields, then sends the result to your phone. Neither keeps the images or text after the response. |
| Asking a question | Search over your vault to pick the relevant documents happens on the phone. | Your question, plus short text excerpts from the documents the phone selected. Not images. | The AI provider composes the answer from those excerpts and returns it with document references. |
| Storing the vault | Yes. Encrypted with iOS Data Protection; locked with Face ID or passcode; re-locks after about a minute in the background. | Nothing, unless you turn on iCloud sync. | Nothing. iCloud sync copies the vault to your own iCloud account, which we cannot read. |
| Offline use | Opening the vault, browsing, keyword search and reminders work offline. | — | Reading new documents and asking questions need a connection and wait until you have one. |
| Logs and retention | — | An anonymous installation ID and request counts, for rate limiting. | Request logs hold the endpoint, timing, success or failure and a short prefix of the installation ID — never document content. Kept up to 12 months. The AI provider is used through its API, under terms that exclude training on your data; its own short-term abuse-monitoring retention is described in its API data-usage policy. |
We don’t run every computer ourselves. Two kinds of companies help us operate Paperlock, and your data passes through them only in the moment of processing:
These providers process your data solely to deliver the feature you asked for, under agreements that prohibit them from retaining your documents, using them for training, or using them for anything else. No other third parties receive your data — there are no advertising or analytics companies involved, because we don’t use any.
Because your documents never leave your control, most privacy rights are literally in your hands: view, export, or delete any document — or the entire vault — right in the app, with immediate effect. Depending on where you live (for example, in the EU/EEA, UK, or California), you may also have legal rights to access, correct, or delete personal data and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. For anything we can help with, email hello@getpaperlock.com — though for most requests our honest answer will be that we hold nothing about you to hand over.
If you let Paperlock look for documents in your photos, that scan happens on your phone — your photo library is never uploaded or browsed by us. Paperlock only reads your library; it never deletes or modifies anything in it. Only the specific documents you approve for import are copied into your vault.
Anonymous event counts, such as how many documents were scanned or how many questions were asked, plus basic reliability data like whether a request succeeded. This tells us whether the app is working. It contains no document content, no text from your papers, and nothing that identifies you. Data is not linked to your identity, and document content is never used for training or advertising.
On the App Store privacy label, this shows up as “Data Not Linked to You: Usage Data, Diagnostics” — and nothing else.
Subscriptions are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. We never see your payment details — Apple simply tells the app whether a subscription is active.
Paperlock is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect any information from them (we barely collect information from anyone).
If we change this policy, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we’ll say so plainly in the app. We will never quietly weaken the promises above.
Email hello@getpaperlock.com — a real person will answer.