Does Clean Email Read Your Emails? What Data It Accesses and Stores

What Clean Email reads from your Gmail

Clean Email reads Gmail message metadata only. It never reads, downloads, or displays the text or body of an email.

What Clean Email never accesses

Clean Email's own code path only ever reads message metadata to build counts. It does not fetch, store, or display message content.

• The body or text content of any email message
• The actual file inside an attachment — only whether an attachment exists
• Your Google account password — sign-in uses Google OAuth, so Clean Email never sees or stores it

What Clean Email stores in its database

Clean Email stores counts, not content. A scan result is a set of numbers — how many emails are deletable versus protected, and how much storage they take up — never the emails themselves.

• The total count of deletable (non-protected) emails and the total count of protected emails — not a breakdown by category
• Estimated storage that a cleanup can free
• Sender addresses or domains you add to your protected list (whitelist)
• No email subjects, bodies, or attachment files are ever stored

How long data is kept, and your control over it

Because Clean Email never stores email content, there is no content archive to retain in the first place — only the counts and your whitelist, kept for as long as your account is connected.

You can ask for stored counts and whitelist data to be removed by emailing contact@clean-email.com.

You can revoke Clean Email's Gmail access at any time from your Google Account permissions page, in addition to disconnecting from within the app. Once revoked, Clean Email can no longer read any Gmail data.

Bound by Google's rules

Clean Email's access to Gmail data is not self-policed — it is governed by Google's API Services User Data Policy, which restricts how a third-party app like Clean Email may access, use, and store data obtained through the Gmail API.

Clean Email requests the full https://mail.google.com/ scope because Google's narrower gmail.modify scope does not support permanent deletion. A broad scope does not mean broad use: Clean Email's code still only ever reads metadata, never message bodies.

FAQ

Does Clean Email read the content of my emails?

No. Clean Email never reads, stores, or displays the body or text content of your emails. It only reads Gmail metadata — sender address, labels, message size, thread ID, and whether a message has an attachment — to build counts for cleanup.

What data does Clean Email store about my Gmail account?

Only aggregate numbers, never content: the total count of emails it can delete versus the total it protects, how much storage they take up, and any sender addresses or domains you've added to your whitelist. None of this lets anyone reconstruct what a message actually said.

Does Clean Email store copies of my emails on its servers?

No. Clean Email does not fetch, copy, or store the actual content of your emails. Its database only holds numeric counts and the metadata needed to run a cleanup, such as sender, labels, size, and thread ID.

Why does Clean Email need full Gmail access if it doesn't read my emails?

Clean Email requests the https://mail.google.com/ scope because Google's narrower gmail.modify scope cannot perform permanent deletion (messages.batchDelete). Even with this broad scope, Clean Email's code only ever reads message metadata, never message bodies.

Can Clean Email see what's inside my attachments?

No. Clean Email only checks whether a message has an attachment, not the attachment's content. Any message with an attachment of any kind (document, image, PDF, video, audio) is automatically protected and excluded from deletion.

Is Clean Email bound by Google's privacy rules?

Yes. Clean Email's use of Gmail data is governed by Google's API Services User Data Policy, which restricts how third-party apps can access, use, and store data obtained through the Gmail API.

How long does Clean Email keep my data?

Clean Email keeps only the counts and your protected sender list for as long as your account is connected — it never held email content, so there is no content archive to retain. You can ask for this data to be removed at contact@clean-email.com.

How do I stop Clean Email from accessing my Gmail account?

Revoke Clean Email's access anytime from your Google Account permissions page (myaccount.google.com/permissions), or disconnect it from within the app. Once revoked, Clean Email can no longer read any Gmail data.