Account deletion · AutoFile · 3 October 2026

Delete your AutoFile account

AutoFile, published by Benjamin Cohen-Solal, has no account of its own: you sign in with your Google account. What we hold amounts to two lines on a server, and this page explains how to have them erased — from the app, in two taps, or by email.

From the app, immediately

Open AutoFile.
In the Settings tab, tap “Delete my data”.
Confirm.

Deletion is immediate and final: there is no bin and no cooling-off period. The app then signs you out, and access to your Google Drive is revoked with Google.

If you have linked several Google accounts, the deletion covers all of them: the list of documents already filed of each account is erased first, then the permission of each account is withdrawn. If one of these accounts can no longer be reached — its owner withdrew AutoFile's access —, everything else is erased, then the app tells you which .autofile-filed.json file to delete by hand, and in which account. A temporary failure, such as having no network, stops everything and deletes nothing: you can try again.

By email, if you no longer have the app

Write to contact@bencs.app from the Google address you signed in with, asking for your AutoFile account to be deleted. It is that address that lets us find your data; a request sent from a different address cannot be honoured, since we cannot verify it comes from you.

We process the request within 30 days and confirm by reply.

What gets deleted

Data	Where it lives	After the request
Your document balance	AutoFile server	Deleted
Your Google account identifier	AutoFile server	Deleted — it was the key the balance was filed under
Your subscription status, cached	AutoFile server	Deleted
The day of your last analysis	AutoFile server	Deleted
Your profiles, the folders you showed AutoFile for each one, and what it learned from them	Your phone	Deleted
Documents still waiting to be filed	Your phone	Deleted — the shared originals are untouched
The list of documents already filed of each linked account — fingerprint, date and folder of each, never its name or content	A `.autofile-filed.json` file at the root of the “My Drive” of each linked account, and your phone	Erased first, before access is withdrawn. If that is impossible — offline, or Drive refusing —, the app tells you and deletes nothing. The one exception: a linked account whose owner withdrew access; everything else is then erased, and the app tells you which file to delete by hand
The refresh token of each account linked through the browser, and the address of each linked account	Your phone's vault	Deleted
The “original to remove” note of a moved document: account, folder and fingerprint, never its name	Your phone	Deleted
Access permission to Google Drive for each linked account	At Google	Revoked

If that balance included purchased documents — a pack, or a subscription's remainder — they are destroyed along with everything else, with no refund from us. Deleting your account is not a refund procedure: for a pack bought recently, go through Google Play's refund process before deleting your data.

What is not deleted, and why

Documents you have already filed stay in your Google Drive. They belong to you, they are on your own storage, and AutoFile has no right to touch them: its permission only covers files it has placed there itself, and it disappears along with the account. To delete them, go through Google Drive.
An original put in the trash by a move is not erased by this request. It stays in the trash of its Google account, where Google erases it 30 days later; AutoFile never erases anything permanently. To take it out or delete it sooner, use Google Drive.
A request by email does not erase the list of documents already filed. It lives in a .autofile-filed.json file at the root of “My Drive”, which the publisher has no access to. If you have already uninstalled the app, delete that file yourself in Google Drive, like any other file. If you used an earlier version (0.9.3 or before), an old copy of that list may remain in the hidden application folder of your Drive, which AutoFile can no longer reach: to erase it, in Google Drive on the web, Settings (gear) › Manage apps › AutoFile › Options › Delete hidden app data.
There is one list per linked account. A .autofile-filed.json file exists at the root of the “My Drive” of each Google account linked to a profile; each one is deleted in the Drive of its account.
Your subscription, if it is ongoing, is not cancelled by this request. A subscription is cancelled from the Google Play Store, under Payments & subscriptions — we have no technical way to do it on your behalf. Deleting your data without cancelling would leave you paying for nothing.
The identifier of each purchase already credited is kept. It contains nothing that identifies the person: the fingerprint of your account is erased when the account is deleted. It stays so that the same purchase cannot be credited twice.
The mark “welcome documents already given” is kept. It is only an encrypted fingerprint (HMAC, with a secret key) of your Google account identifier, and nothing else: no email address, no name, no document. It stays so that the documents offered on arrival cannot be obtained again by deleting and then recreating an account.
Aggregated cost counters are kept for 13 months. These are totals — a number of analyses and an amount per day — with no identifier, no file name and no folder name. There is nothing in them that could identify you, and they are used to keep an eye on the infrastructure bill.
Technical error reports, if any, expire within 90 days. They contain no document, no file name and no folder name.

Deleting part of your data, without deleting the account

Two procedures, depending on what you want gone. Neither one requires deleting your AutoFile account.

Erasing what this phone has learned

Open AutoFile.
In the Settings tab, tap “Sign out or switch account”.

This erases from the phone the folders you had shown AutoFile and everything it had inferred from them, as well as your naming preferences, and revokes with Google the permission to access your Drive. It is immediate, and there is nothing to ask anyone.

What signing out does not touch: your document balance, which stays on the server and is returned to you if you sign in again — generally what you want when changing phones —, the list of documents already filed kept in your Drive, for the same reason, and documents still waiting to be filed, which stay on the phone. Losing someone's document because they signed out is the one thing AutoFile absolutely refuses to do.

With several linked accounts, signing out withdraws the permission of each one and erases the list of profiles, the data of each profile and the stored addresses. If a withdrawal fails, the app says so, for that account.

Asking for a specific piece of data to be deleted

Write to contact@bencs.app from the Google address you sign in to AutoFile with, stating what you want deleted — your document balance, for instance, or the record of your subscription. It is that address that lets us find the data concerned; a request sent from a different address cannot be honoured, since we cannot verify it comes from you.

We process the request within 30 days and confirm by reply. The rest of your account keeps working.

What each procedure removes

Data	Signing out	Email request	Account deletion
Profiles, learned folders and preferences, on the phone	Deleted	Deleted	Deleted
List of documents already filed, in a file at the root of the Drive of each linked account	Kept	Out of our reach — see above	Deleted
Access permission to Google Drive, for each linked account	Revoked	Revoked on request	Revoked
Document balance, on the server	Kept	Deleted on request	Deleted
Record of your subscription, on the server	Kept	Deleted on request	Deleted
Documents still waiting to be filed	Kept	Deleted on request	Deleted
Documents already filed in your Google Drives	Kept	Kept	Kept
“Welcome documents already given” mark, on the server	Kept	Kept	Kept

Retention periods are the same in every case: aggregated cost counters live for 13 months and technical error reports for 90 days. Neither one contains an identifier, a file name or a folder name — there is nothing in them concerning you to delete.

Write to us

For any question about this procedure: contact@bencs.app. You may also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: the CNIL, the editor's own authority, or the authority of your own country of residence, your place of work, or the place of the alleged infringement.