PrivaPDF is provided by Emerging AI LLC ("we", "us", "our"). This policy covers both the PrivaPDF desktop application ("the App") and the PrivaPDF website at privapdf.org ("the Website").
Our Core Promise
Your documents never leave your device. No document content, file names, extracted text, page images, or any file data is ever uploaded to our servers or shared with any third party. All PDF processing — PII detection, redaction, and saving — happens entirely on your local machine.
This is the one guarantee we make, and everything else in this policy exists to support it.
The App — Information We Collect
The App communicates with our servers in two limited cases, neither of which involves your documents:
1. License Activation & Validation
When you activate a paid license, and periodically afterwards, the App contacts our license server (api.privapdf.org) to confirm your license is valid. This request includes your purchase email (your license identifier) and a hashed, non-reversible machine identifier. The free tier does not require activation and does not send license data.
2. Anonymous Quality Diagnostics
To help us fix bugs and make PrivaPDF faster, the App may send anonymous diagnostic reports — for example, crash stack traces, the App and OS version, and aggregate technical performance data. These reports are strictly technical. They never contain document content, file data, extracted text, PII, your email, or anything that could identify you or your files. We may add similar anonymous technical diagnostics over time; this policy always governs them.
The App — Information We Do NOT Collect
- No document content — your PDFs, page images, and extracted text never leave your machine
- No advertising identifiers, third-party analytics SDKs, or marketing trackers of any kind
The App — How Documents Are Processed
All PDF processing — PII detection, redaction, and file saving — happens locally on your device. Documents are read from your local file system, processed in memory, and saved back to your local file system. At no point is any document content sent to any server.
The Website
The PrivaPDF website (privapdf.org) is a marketing site, separate from the App. To understand how visitors discover and use the site, we use PostHog (posthog.com) for product analytics. PostHog records anonymous events such as page views, page leaves, link and button clicks, web performance vitals, and aggregate session activity. To do this, it sets first-party cookies and writes a small amount of data to your browser's local storage to maintain an anonymous session identifier. It does not record any document content (the Website does not handle documents), and we have configured PostHog so that anonymous visitors are not assigned identifiable person profiles — a person profile is only ever created if you take an explicit identifying action, which the Website does not currently do. Event data is processed by PostHog Inc. on US infrastructure. We do not use PostHog data to build advertising profiles, follow you across unrelated websites, or sell your data to data brokers. Our hosting provider may also retain standard server access logs (such as IP address, user agent, and request URL) for a short period for security, abuse prevention, and debugging.
The Website loads fonts from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com / fonts.gstatic.com). When you visit the Website, your browser connects to Google's servers to download font files. This may transmit your IP address to Google. Google's privacy policy applies to that data: policies.google.com/privacy.
Payment Processing
Purchases are processed by Paddle (paddle.com), our Merchant of Record. When you purchase a PrivaPDF license, Paddle collects and processes your payment information, including:
- Name and email address
- Billing address
- Payment method details (credit card, PayPal, etc.)
We do not receive or store your full payment details. Paddle shares your purchase email with us so we can activate your license. For details on how Paddle handles your data, see Paddle's Privacy Policy.
Third-Party Services — Summary
| Service | Purpose | Data shared |
|---|---|---|
License Validation API (api.privapdf.org) |
License activation & periodic validation | Purchase email, hashed machine ID |
| Quality Diagnostics Endpoint | Crash reports & performance diagnostics | Anonymous diagnostic data (never document content, PII, or identifying information) |
| Paddle | Payment processing | Name, email, billing address, payment method |
| PostHog | Website analytics (page views, clicks, web vitals, aggregate usage) | Anonymous events, IP address, browser/OS info, first-party cookies and local storage session ID |
| Google Fonts | Website font delivery | IP address (via browser request) |
We do not use advertising networks in the App or on the Website, and we do not sell or share your data with data brokers. Details of the web analytics we use on the Website are described in "The Website" section above.
Data Retention
We do not store personal information on our servers beyond what is necessary for license management. License activation records (email and device association) are maintained solely for license management purposes. Paddle retains payment records in accordance with their own data retention policies and applicable legal requirements.
Your Rights
You may request deletion of your license activation data by contacting us. If you are located in the EU/EEA, you may exercise your rights under the GDPR (access, rectification, erasure, portability) by emailing us. For data held by Paddle, please contact Paddle directly.
Children's Privacy
PrivaPDF is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors below the minimum age required to consent to online services in their jurisdiction (for example, 13 in the United States and 16 in parts of the European Union).
Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Minor changes (clarifications, restructuring, corrections) will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this document. For material changes — such as new categories of data collected or new third-party recipients — we will provide reasonable advance notice, such as an in-app banner or an email to licensed users, before the changes take effect. We will never retroactively apply new collection purposes to data already collected under an earlier version of this policy.
Contact
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us at:
Email: support@privapdf.org