Privacy policy

Who is responsible for your data

The data controller is Emmanuel Jégo, sole proprietor (entrepreneur individuel), 26 B rue Émile Bernard, 35700 Rennes, France (SIREN 850 238 825).

For any question about your data, write to contact@visualpdf.com. Full publisher details are on the legal notice page.

The short version

Here is what matters most:

• Almost every tool runs entirely in your browser: your files never leave your device.
• No account is needed and we never ask who you are to use the tools.
• Our analytics are self-hosted, cookieless and cannot follow you across the web.
• We show no ads and we never sell or share your data for advertising.
• The little data we do receive (a feedback message, a file sent for Office conversion) is deleted on a fixed schedule, detailed below.

Files processed in your browser

When you use our client-side tools (merge, split, compress, sign, watermark, crop and all others except the Office converters), the whole job runs on your own device. The file is never uploaded: we cannot see it, store it or scan it, and no trace of it reaches our servers.

You can verify this yourself: open your browser's developer tools on the Network tab while using a tool, and watch that no file data is sent.

Office to PDF conversions

Converting Word, Excel or PowerPoint files to PDF requires software that cannot run in a browser yet, so these three tools use our server. Here is exactly what happens to your file:

• Your file is sent over an encrypted connection to our server, which forwards it to Microsoft (OneDrive) for the conversion itself.
• The copy sent to Microsoft is deleted immediately after the conversion, and an automated sweep removes any leftover within the hour.
• The converted PDF is held in our storage (Cloudflare R2) so you can download it, then deleted automatically after 1 hour at most, with a 1-day storage rule as a safety net.
• Your download link stops working after 30 minutes.
• We never read the content of your documents, and file names are not written to our logs.

Help and feedback form

When you send us a message through the "Help and feedback" form, we receive: the reason you selected, your message, your email address (so we can answer you), the page you wrote from, your interface language, your browser identification string, your country (derived from your connection; the IP address itself is never stored), and the file you chose to attach, if any.

We use this data for one purpose only: understanding and answering your request. Your message and its attachment are deleted automatically 30 days after your request is handled, and at the latest 12 months after you sent it.

Tool ratings

When you rate a tool, we store the tool name, your rating and, if you add one, your comment. Nothing else: no IP address, no identifier, no account. The "you already rated this tool" flag lives only in your own browser.

Because ratings are anonymous, we keep them indefinitely as product statistics. Please do not include personal information in a rating comment: we have no way of knowing who wrote it, so we cannot link it back to you to delete it.

Audience analytics

We measure how the site is used with Rybbit, an open-source, cookieless analytics tool that we host ourselves on a server in France (OVH). Nothing is shared with an advertising network, and no profile of you is built.

What is recorded: pages viewed, referring site, browser and operating system family, screen size, country and region. Your IP address is used at the moment of the visit to derive the country and region, then discarded: it is not stored with your visits, and events cannot be traced back to you.

When a tool fails, we also record which tool failed together with a truncated technical error message, so we can fix bugs. This report contains no personal information and is not linked to you.

Analytics events are kept for a maximum of 24 months, then deleted.

This processing rests on our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the service. It is configured to stay within the audience-measurement exemption of the French CNIL, which is why no consent banner is required.

Security and abuse prevention

To protect the service against automated abuse, two mechanisms briefly process your IP address:

• Rate limiting: our server counts requests per IP address over a one-minute window. These counters expire after 2 minutes at most and are never stored with any submission.
• Cloudflare Turnstile: the anti-bot check that runs when you send a feedback message, rate a tool or start an Office conversion. It is operated by Cloudflare, which processes your IP address, your browser identification string, a technical fingerprint of your connection and the identifier of our site to tell humans from bots. Turnstile sets no advertising cookie, is never used to track you across websites, and Cloudflare does not use this data to build a profile of you.

Google Drive import

If you choose to import a file from Google Drive, the whole exchange happens between your browser and Google: our servers are never involved. The permission you grant covers only the files you pick (Google's "drive.file" scope), and the temporary access token is kept in your browser's local storage, nowhere else.

This feature only runs when you click it, and it is governed by Google's own privacy policy.

How long we keep data

Everything we hold is deleted on a fixed schedule:

Cookies and local storage

Visual PDF uses exactly one cookie: "i18n_redirected", which remembers your language preference. It is strictly functional, contains no identifier, and is exempt from consent. There are no advertising or third-party tracking cookies, which is why you see no cookie banner.

A few settings are kept in your browser's local storage and never leave your device: the list of tools you have already rated, your preferred zoom level in the editor, and, if you use the Google Drive import, the temporary Google access token.

Third-party scripts load in your browser only where needed: Cloudflare Turnstile on the forms it protects, and Google's scripts if you open the Drive import. Fonts are served from our own domain, not from Google Fonts servers.

Service providers and recipients

Your data is never sold, rented, or shared for advertising. The only recipients are the technical providers that run the service:

• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States): hosting, storage, content delivery and security. Bound by a data processing addendum with EU standard contractual clauses.
• Microsoft (United States): performs the Word, Excel and PowerPoint conversions only, as described above.
• OVH SAS (France): hosts our self-hosted analytics.
• Google (United States): only if you use the Google Drive import, which runs entirely in your browser.

International transfers

We keep processing in the European Union wherever possible. Cloudflare and Microsoft may process data in the United States; those transfers are covered by the safeguards provided for by the GDPR (standard contractual clauses and, where applicable, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework).

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask us to access, correct, delete, or hand over the data we hold about you, and you can object to or restrict its processing. In practice the only data we can usually link to you is a feedback message sent from your email address.

To exercise any of these rights, write to contact@visualpdf.com. We answer within one month.

If you believe your rights are not respected, you can lodge a complaint with the French data protection authority: CNIL, 3 Place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, France (www.cnil.fr).

No profiling, no accounts, no children's data

We make no automated decisions about you and build no profiles. The service requires no account and is intended for a general audience: we do not knowingly collect data from children, and the little data we collect is the same for every visitor.

Changes to this policy

If our practices change, we will update this page and its "last updated" date before the change takes effect. Significant changes will be highlighted on the site.