Privacy policy
Last updated:
The short version
- Your documents are deleted twenty-four hours after you last touch them, or twenty-four hours for a document you have paid for, so you can come back for it.
- They are processed on servers in Germany and nowhere else.
- They are used only to do the job you asked for. Nothing else reads them.
- The only things we keep about a person are an email address if you have one with us, what you have paid for, and a hashed IP address used to hold back abuse.
- There is no analytics, no advertising and no third-party tracking on this site.
Your documents
Editing a PDF properly means opening it, so the file you choose is uploaded to our server and worked on there. While you have it open we hold the original, the working copy and the undo history so you can step backwards.
Everything about that document is deleted 24 hours after you last touch it. The clock restarts each time you touch it, and simply having it open in a tab counts, so a long session is never interrupted; a day of silence and it is gone. There is also a "Delete now" button in the editor that removes it immediately.
Your files are used only to do the thing you asked for: render the pages, read the text, apply your edits, and give you the result back. They are not read by a person, not shown to anyone else, not analysed, not sold, and not used to train anything. We do not keep backups of them, which is the other side of the same coin — once a document is deleted it is gone, so keep your own copy.
What we store about you
Three things, and this is the whole list.
- Your email address
- Only if you take out the yearly plan, which needs an account, or if you give it to Lemon Squeezy when buying a single download so they can send you a receipt. We use it to sign you in and to write to you about your account. We do not send marketing to it, and editing a document does not need an email address at all.
- What you have paid for
- Which documents you have bought a download for, and, if you are on the yearly plan, when the current year ends, along with the customer and subscription identifiers Lemon Squeezy gives us so we can look a payment up. No card details ever reach us.
- A hashed IP address
- Editing is free and unmetered, but we still have to stop one person flooding the service. We hash your address with a secret and keep the hash for a short while. We do not store the address itself, and the hash cannot be turned back into one. It is used to hold back abuse and nothing else.
What we do not store
- No analytics, no page-view tracking, no session recording, no heatmaps.
- No advertising identifiers and no ad networks.
- No third-party scripts on this website at all — check the page source.
- No copy of your documents once the day is up.
- No card numbers. Those never reach our servers.
Cookies
If you sign in, we set one cookie that keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the service to work, which is why there is no cookie banner. That is the only cookie we set. There are no advertising, analytics or third-party cookies on this site.
Companies we rely on
- Lemon Squeezy — payments
- All payments go through Lemon Squeezy, which is the merchant of record: they are the seller on your receipt and they handle the tax. When you pay, they see your billing details: card number, name, billing address or country, and your email. We never see or store the card number — we get back a customer identifier and whether the payment worked. They process that data under their own privacy policy, which is worth reading at lemonsqueezy.com/privacy.
- Resend — email
- Account email — sign-in links and the note that a card was declined — is delivered through Resend. Resend sees the address we send to and the contents of that message. There is no tracking pixel in either message.
- Our hosting provider — Germany
- The application servers, the database and the temporary document storage all run in Germany. Your documents are not copied to another country.
That is the complete list of companies that can touch your data. There is no fourth one.
Why we are allowed to hold any of this
Under the GDPR, every use of personal data needs a legal basis. Ours are:
- Performing our contract with you — processing the document you uploaded, running your subscription, sending receipts.
- Legitimate interest — the hashed IP counter, which exists to keep the free plan sustainable and to stop bulk abuse. It is the least identifying way we could think of to count.
- Legal obligation — keeping invoice records for as long as tax law requires.
How long we keep things
- Documents and everything derived from them: 24 hours after your last action.
- Hashed IP counters: until the day they count has passed.
- Your email address and subscription record: while your account exists.
- Invoices and payment records: as long as tax law requires us to keep them.
Your rights, and how to use them
If you are in the EU or the UK you have the right to get a copy of the data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to take it elsewhere in a portable format, to object to processing based on legitimate interest, and to withdraw consent where you gave it.
To use any of them, email support@pencopdf.com from the address on your account. We will reply within 30 days, usually much sooner. There is no form and no identity-verification ordeal.
Deleting your account removes your email address and your subscription record. Your documents are already gone. If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority — you do not need our permission and you do not have to talk to us first.
Children
This service is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly hold data about anyone under 16.
Changes to this policy
If we change it, we update the date at the top. If a change actually matters — a new company touching your data, a longer retention period — we email anyone with an account before it takes effect rather than quietly editing the page.
Contact
Anything at all: support@pencopdf.com.