How your data is protected

The text read from each document you upload (not the file or photo itself; last year's return is also kept as a file), the numbers read from them, your answers, and the people you add on the People page (names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and your address, printed on your forms). Plus a small account record: your email (kept to sign you in; we send one email to confirm it's yours, and nothing else), the names you give your AI links, and your key, locked with your password and your recovery code (below). The names and sizes of your files show on disk. Their contents don't. From a photo we keep only the text, never the image, because a phone photo can carry your location.

Your account has its own random 256-bit key. Your return, documents and answers are encrypted with it (AES-256-GCM) before they're saved. Your email, the names of your AI links, and your file names and sizes are not encrypted.

That key is never stored as-is, only locked: once with your password, once with your recovery code, and once with each AI link you make. Locking uses scrypt (N = 2¹⁷, r = 8, p = 1, a 128-bit random salt), which makes each password guess slow on purpose. Passwords are at least 12 characters, and after 10 wrong tries in an hour an account locks.

At rest, only your password, your recovery code or one of your AI links can unlock your data. While you are signed in, or your AI is using its link, our server unlocks it in memory to work on it, so a server run by someone who changed the code could read it (see the limits below). We can't reset your password for you. Only your recovery code can.

Your AI reads your documents through the link you give it. For documents uploaded through Stellana, the AI is shown the text with Social Security numbers hidden in the usual formats (names, addresses and amounts are shown as printed). A file you hand your AI directly, or attach in the chat, is seen by the AI company in full. What the AI company does with what it sees is up to it and your settings there. You can give one link per AI, up to 3, and remove any of them on your account page; a removed link stops working at once. Treat each link like a password: anyone who has it can open your return. Answers sent through your AI are checked for SSN, birth date and street-address patterns and refused when they match. Your AI can't read or change the People page. The tax math gets ages only, never names, SSNs or birth dates.

Your password and recovery code (only the locked key). Your bank account and routing numbers: checked on the Sign page, then thrown away. Your signature. Your AI links: we keep only a one-way scramble of each (SHA-256) to recognize it.

We file nothing and send your return nowhere. You print, sign and mail your returns yourself. Two things leave the server: the one confirmation email (our email service sees your address and the link), and whatever your own AI reads through your link.

Until you delete it. Signing in keeps it unlocked in the server's memory; you're signed out after 30 minutes idle or 12 hours at most, and an unused unlocked return is locked again after 30 minutes.

On your account page, Delete everything removes your encrypted return, every uploaded file, your locked keys, your AI links and your account. Then it checks the disk item by item and gives you a receipt showing each one gone, with the time. One exception: the hosting company keeps automatic disk backups for up to a day, so an encrypted copy of your return, plus the account list (your email and AI-link names, not encrypted), can sit in a backup until it expires.

In a private GitHub repository. This page pulls its numbers from that code, so what it says is what runs.