How deletion works

Deletion runs on three independent triggers. You can press Finish and delete at any point. A scheduled job removes expired sessions every few minutes, whether or not your browser is still open. And the storage itself has an expiry rule that removes anything left behind, as a last resort.

Three triggers rather than one because deletion is the promise the whole product rests on, and any single mechanism can fail. Closing the tab, losing your connection or your laptop going to sleep must not leave a report sitting somewhere.

When you delete a session, we check that each item is actually gone before telling you it has been deleted. If a check does not come back clean, the message says deletion is being retried rather than claiming it is done. We would rather tell you something inconvenient and true.

The uploaded file itself goes earlier than the rest. As soon as the values have been extracted from it and you have confirmed them, the original is removed — the page images used for checking stay only until the session ends.