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How these guides work
Checked against the providers’ own help pages
Every period, menu name and limit comes from Google, Microsoft, Apple or Dropbox help — quoted, dated and listed at the end of each guide.
One guide, five parts
The answer first
Where to look, in one paragraph, before any detail.
Your provider
A selector shows only the places that apply to your service and account type.
The steps
In the order that keeps the most copies intact.
The limits
When a copy is gone for good, and what no service can change.
How a fact gets in
- Only the provider’s own pagessupport.google.com, support.microsoft.com, support.apple.com and help.dropbox.com.
- Exact words, checked by a scriptEach quote in our journal must appear word for word on the page we read.
- Silence stays silenceIf a page doesn’t say how long something is kept, the guide tells you to check the page for your plan.
- DatedEvery guide shows the month it was last checked.
What we don’t do
No account access, no uploads, no recovery software. We never quote a period we could not find on the provider’s page.