Cookie policy

What a cookie is doing here at all

A cookie is a small note a website asks your browser to keep. Ours exist for one reason: to know how many people opened a page, so we can tell which tools are worth building next.

Turning analytics off costs you nothing. Every tool works identically either way, and we would rather have your trust than your page view.

If you sign in

An account is optional on this site and most people will never make one. If you do, signing in needs cookies (a session is a cookie), so these three are not on the consent switch above: without them, signing in is not a thing that can work. They are set when you sign in and gone when you sign out, and if you never sign in, none of them is ever set.

None of these measures anything. They answer one question (is this person signed in) and they are not shared with anybody. Signing in still tells us nothing about your documents, because your documents never leave your browser.

If you agree to analytics

Both come from Google Analytics, and neither appears unless you have agreed.

Those five are every cookie this site sets itself. One other thing can set cookies, on one page, and it has a section of its own below.

Things that are not cookies

• Your cookie answer is kept in your browser's local storage, on your device. It is never sent to us. It exists so the banner does not follow you around the site.
• Your starred tools, your language and appearance choices, and the list of tools you opened recently are kept the same way, in local storage on this device. Account Settings has a button that clears the lot. If you sign in, the first three are also saved to your account so they follow you to another device; the list of tools you opened recently is not, and never will be.
• A signature you saved in Sign PDF is kept the same way, in local storage on this device, and only if you pressed save on it. It is never sent to us and it is never attached to an account, so it does not follow you to another device. The pad lists what you saved with a cross to forget it, and the Account Settings button clears it along with everything else.
• Which of two drop zone designs your browser shows is kept the same way, as one random word in local storage, so the page does not change between visits. It is not an identifier, it is never sent to us, and nothing records which design anybody saw. The Account Settings button clears it too, and you are simply given one again.
• None of that has anything to do with the cookie question above. Accepting or refusing analytics does not change what is kept on your device, and refusing does not cost you a saved signature or a starred tool.
• Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views without any cookie and cannot track you across other sites, so it runs for everyone and needs no consent.

None of this touches your documents. Cookies measure pages, not files, and your files stay on your device regardless of what you choose here.

Search results from Google, on one page

The search box on this site runs on our own machine: the results come from a small index your browser downloads, and typing in it contacts nobody. Underneath those results, on the search page and nowhere else, we also show results from Google, and those carry ads. That is how the site is paid for.

Loading that panel means contacting Google, and Google sets its own cookies when you do: for its own preferences, for fraud prevention, and for measuring and personalising the ads it shows. They are Google's cookies on Google's domains, so Google is the only one who can list them definitively; their cookie page and My Ad Center are where to read the list and turn personalisation off. We are not going to reprint a version of it here that could quietly go out of date.

What we can tell you exactly is when it happens, because that part is ours:

• Only if you agreed to cookies above. Say no, or say nothing, and the Google panel is not loaded at all: not hidden, not loaded. Google is never contacted.
• Only on the search page. It is not in the footer, not on the home page, and not on any of the tools. Open a tool and nothing on the page talks to Google.
• Only what you typed into the search box goes across. Never a file, a filename or a page count. The tools do not send those anywhere, and the search box has never seen them.

Ads pay for the site. They do not change the deal on your documents: every tool still runs in your browser, and no ad network (Google included) is ever in a position to see a file, because a file is never sent anywhere to begin with.

If we ever add display advertising to the rest of the site, this page and the privacy policy get updated before the first one appears, exactly as they were for this.

Blocking cookies yourself

Every browser can block or clear cookies from its settings, usually under Privacy. Doing that will also clear your choice here, so the banner will ask once more. Nothing on this site breaks if you block cookies entirely.

Questions go to hello@pdfsansar.com.