What happens to your statement
A statement we can read is never written to disk and is never kept. Your
PDF or CSV is read in memory, the transactions are taken out of it, and the file itself
is gone before the page comes back. We never have a copy of a statement we could read.
The one exception is a statement laid out in a way we cannot read yet. Then
we keep one encrypted copy of that file, not linked to your account here, so we can teach
the site to read that layout, and we delete it after 30 days. Nothing from
it is added to your transactions.
The transactions we read out of it are kept for 13 months, so that your
statements are still here when you come back next month and so this September can be put
beside last September. What is kept for each transaction is exactly this:
the date, the description as your bank printed it, the shop name we worked out
from it, the amount, the running balance if your bank printed one, and the category it
ended up in. Alongside them we keep which bank it was, which account type your
bank printed on it, and which dates it covered.
We keep your account number, and we hold it encrypted. It is on the
screen because it is the only thing that tells two accounts at the same bank apart —
two Investec accounts can both be called "Private Bank Account". It is stored scrambled
with a key that is not kept in the same place as the number, and
it is deleted when the rest of your statements are: with your account if
you have one, or with the 13 months if you do not.
We put a cookie in this browser so that your statements are still here when you
come back. It holds one random number and nothing else. That cookie is the only
thing that joins one visit to the next, it is the only way we can find your statements
again, and clearing your browser's cookies ends it — after that we have
no way to match you to anything we hold, and it is deleted when it expires.
We do not ask who you are. We do not store your name,
and we do not store your IP address, and you can use all of this
without telling us anything about yourself. The
account number above is the one thing we read off the statement that identifies the
account, and we never ask you to type it in.
If you create an account, we store your email address and a scrambled form of
your password — nothing else about you. That is the only thing an account
changes: your statements follow your email address instead of this browser, so you can
reach them from your phone or from another computer. We never keep the password itself
and it cannot be worked back out of what we store.
After 13 months it is deleted automatically, by a job that runs every
night, and the 13 months starts again each time you come back.
An account is the exception: your statements are kept
for as long as the account exists — a tool for putting this September
beside last September cannot delete the September you came back to compare against.
We also keep a count of how often a shop lands in a category — like
“CHECKERS, Groceries, 412 times” — and your corrections improve it. That count is all
we keep: no amounts, no dates, and no link to you or to anyone else.
Nothing about your statement leaves our servers. It is not sent to any
other company, it is not used to advertise to you, and it is not sold.
When you tell us to always file a shop or a description under a category, that rule is kept
with your statements — the text it matches, the category you chose and, if you limited it to
one account, which account; nothing else. The
Rules page lists every rule and deletes any of it.
The full privacy policy and the
terms of use say the same things at greater length.