The following files may contain active authentication tokens:

• ~/.codex/auth.json
• ~/.codex/account_backup/<profile>/auth.json

Treat them as secrets.

1. Keep backup directory permission restricted:
   • chmod 700 ~/.codex/account_backup
2. Restrict each auth.json file:
   • chmod 600 ~/.codex/account_backup/*/auth.json
3. On Windows, restrict access to %CODEX_HOME%\account_backup and %CODEX_HOME%\bin with NTFS permissions:
   • icacls %CODEX_HOME%\account_backup /inheritance:r /grant:r %USERNAME%:F
4. Never push token files to Git repositories.
5. Avoid syncing backup folders to public cloud storage.

This project mainly performs local file operations. When reading plan/quota data it sends the OAuth access token over HTTPS to official ChatGPT/OpenAI endpoints and fetches quota metadata only — no prompts are sent and no models are invoked.

The reset-credit lookup sends only the credentials required for the account scope; the app persists just the available count, grant time, and expiry time — never card IDs or raw response bodies.

Main risk is accidental token exposure through Git, screenshots, shared terminals, insecure backups, or loose Windows ACLs.