Privacy policy
Last updated: 15 August 2026
This policy sets out what actually happens to your data and your documents, tool by tool. It is written to be understood, not to cover our backs. If anything it says stops being true, either the text gets corrected or the service does.
1. Who is responsible
The controller is the owner of TotalPDF Kit. The site is operated from Spain, and Spanish law applies to it, as section 10 of the terms sets out.
For anything to do with your data, and for the identifying details needed to serve a formal notice, write through the contact form and choose the “Privacy or my data” category. The reply comes from an address at this domain.
2. What we process, why, and on what basis
The site works without an account. Identifying data only appears if you decide to register or to donate.
| Data | Purpose | Lawful basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Documents you upload to the server-side tools | Running the conversion you asked for | Performance of the service you request (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) | 1 hour from upload, deleted automatically |
| Encrypted pages from the phone-paired scanner | Carrying them from the phone to the computer showing the code | Performance of the service you asked for (art. 6.1.b GDPR) | Deleted on pickup; the session expires after 15 minutes |
| IP address and technical request data | Serving the site, preventing abuse and debugging faults | Legitimate interest in keeping the service running (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Server logs: 30 days |
| Name, email address and message from the form | Reading and answering your enquiry | Performance of the service at your request (Art. 6(1)(b)) | 12 months from the last message |
| Salted hash of your IP address in the form | Blocking automated bulk submissions | Legitimate interest in the security of the service (Art. 6(1)(f)) | 24 hours |
| Email address and account details, if you register | Giving you access to your account | Performance of the service (Art. 6(1)(b)) | For as long as the account exists |
| Donation details | Processing the payment and meeting tax obligations | Performance and legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(b) and 6(1)(c)) | The statutory accounting retention period |
| Analytics and advertising cookies | Measuring use and showing ads | Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) | As stated in the cookie policy |
3. What really happens to your documents
It depends on the tool, and the difference matters. They do not all work the same way, so we are not going to tell you everything stays in your browser when that is not true.
PDF ARENA and a good many of the one-step tools process the document inside your browser. In those cases the file never leaves your device.
Others have to do the work on our server: text recognition, compression, conversion to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, protecting and unprotecting, repairing, and turning web pages into PDF. With those, the file is uploaded, processed and deleted automatically after one hour. The interface warns you before that happens.
Chat PDF is different and deserves a paragraph of its own. To answer questions about what a document contains, the text is extracted and sent to an artificial intelligence model run by an outside provider. That means the contents of that document leave our servers. Section 5 sets out the detail.
The phone scanner also goes through our server, and only if you ask for it. When you pair the phone by reading the QR code, each photo leaves the phone already encrypted; the key is generated by your computer and travels inside the code itself, which is the part of the link your browser never sends us. We hold ciphertext we cannot open, each page is deleted the moment your computer picks it up, and the session expires after fifteen minutes. Cropping and the PDF still happen in your browser.
We do not use your documents to train models of our own, we do not review them by hand, and we do not hand them to anyone beyond what sections 4 and 5 explain.
4. Who your data is shared with
These are all the third parties involved. There are no others.
| Who | Purpose | Where they process the data |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ireland / Google LLC | Advertising (AdSense), analytics (Analytics) and campaigns (Ads) | European Union and United States |
| DeepSeek | Answering questions about a document in Chat PDF, summarising with citations, and translating a PDF | China |
| Clerk, Inc. | Registration and sign-in, if you create an account | United States |
| PayPal | Processing donations and supporter subscriptions | European Union and United States |
| Cloudflare | Delivery network and protection against attacks | Global network, with nodes in the European Union |
| Hostinger | Domain email and delivery of the replies to your form message | European Union |
5. Transfers outside the European Economic Area
Two of the providers above process data outside the European Economic Area, and you deserve to know which ones by name.
United States. Clerk and PayPal, and Google in part, process data there. On 10 July 2023 the European Commission adopted an adequacy decision for the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, and these providers rely either on it or on standard contractual clauses.
China, through DeepSeek. China has no adequacy decision from the European Commission. Three of the 35 tools send text there: Chat PDF, Summarise with citations, and Translate a PDF. In all three it is the extracted text that travels, not the file, and the last two say so on screen and wait for you to accept before anything moves. This means the text of any document you use with those three is transferred to a country whose level of protection the European Union has not declared equivalent. We say so plainly because it is information you need in order to decide: if what a document contains is sensitive or confidential, do not use it with those three. The other 32 tools send nothing to that provider.
We are reviewing this dependency with a view to replacing it with a provider that processes data inside the European Economic Area. Until then, the warning above is part of this policy, not of the small print.
6. How long each thing is kept
The periods are in the table in section 2. Two points that do not fit there.
Deleting uploaded documents is not a statement of intent: an automated job runs every fifteen minutes and removes everything that has passed the hour. Google Analytics measurement data is kept according to the settings of the property, and you can read more in Google's privacy policy.
When a period runs out, the data is deleted. Nothing is filed away “just in case”.
7. Your rights
You have the right to access your data, to rectify it, to erase it, to restrict its processing, to object to it and to data portability. Where processing is based on your consent, you can withdraw it whenever you like, and that does not undo what was done before you withdrew it.
To exercise them, write to us through the contact form using the “Privacy or my data” category. We reply within one month at the latest.
If you believe we have not handled your request as we should have, you can lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (Spanish Data Protection Agency), www.aepd.es, C/ Jorge Juan 6, 28001 Madrid. Complaining is free and you do not need a lawyer.
We do not take automated decisions that produce legal effects concerning you or similarly affect you to a significant degree.
8. Advertising and analytics
The site is free and pays for itself with advertising. We use Google AdSense, and Google and its partners may use cookies to show you ads based on your visits to this and other sites.
None of this switches on before you decide. The first time you arrive from the European Economic Area you will see a panel where you can accept, reject or choose in detail, and rejecting sits at the same level as accepting. You can change your mind at any time from the link in the cookie policy.
You can turn off Google ad personalisation in ad settings, and that of other providers at www.aboutads.info/choices or www.youronlinechoices.eu.
We do not send Google any data that identifies you personally, such as your name or your email address.
9. Children
The service is not aimed at children under 14, the age from which Article 7 of Ley Orgánica 3/2018 allows a person in Spain to consent to the processing of their own data. If you are younger than that, your mother, father or guardian has to authorise it.
If we find we have processed the data of a child under 14 without that authorisation, we erase it.
10. Changes to this policy
When we change something material we will update the date in the header, and if the change affects the lawful basis for a processing activity or brings in a new recipient, we will say so on the site itself.
Earlier versions are not hidden: if you need to know what this policy said on a given date, ask us.