Your documents and writing belong to you. This article is the short, practical version of where the controls are and what we do — and don't do — with your data.
Export everything
You can take all of your data with you at any time. In Settings → Account, the export gives you a full archive of your account — your documents, sources, and library — in structured, machine-readable formats (JSON, plus BibTeX and RIS for your references, bundled as a ZIP). It's your data in a form you can actually reuse, not a locked PDF.
Delete your account
Also in Settings → Account: deleting your account removes your personal data and content. Deletion is real — within 30 days your data is gone, except where we're legally required to keep a record (for example, a billing invoice). It's a permanent action, so we confirm it with you first.
Analytics: off until you say yes
Folio uses privacy-friendly product analytics to see which features help and fix what doesn't — never to track you across other websites, and never sold to anyone. It's off by default. On your first visit you'll see a cookie banner with two equal choices, Accept and Decline; nothing analytics-related is set unless you accept.
You can change your mind whenever you like in Settings → Privacy. Declining costs you nothing — every feature works the same either way. The only cookies that are always on are the ones needed to sign you in, which set no analytics.
What we never do
- We never sell your personal data. Not to advertisers, not to anyone.
- We never use your writing or documents to train AI models. When you use an AI feature, your content is sent to our model providers only to generate the result you asked for, and they're contractually barred from training on it.
- We don't use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don't share cookie data with advertisers.
Special-category data
If you use Folio Surveyor to run a survey, the survey you design may collect sensitive information from respondents — health, beliefs, and so on. In that case you're the controller of those responses and Folio processes them on your behalf, only with each respondent's explicit consent. You decide what your survey asks; we don't use those responses for anything of our own.
The full picture
This is the practical summary. The complete details — legal bases, international data transfers, retention, and your rights under the GDPR — live in the Privacy Policy, with a dedicated GDPR section for readers in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland. If you ever want something we haven't made self-serve, email hello@usefolio.co and we'll handle it.