Is it safe to edit a PDF online?
It depends entirely on one thing: whether the site uploads your file. Most do. Ours mostly does not — and rather than ask you to believe that, this page shows you how to check it in your own browser.
The short answer
Fourteen of our sixteen tools never send your file anywhere. Merging, splitting, compressing, rotating, reordering, deleting pages, converting to and from Word and JPG, filling a form, editing the text, annotating and signing all run inside the tab you have open, on your own computer. We do not receive the file, so there is nothing for us to store, nothing to leak, and nothing to hand to anybody who asks. That is not a policy we could quietly change — it is where the code runs.
No account, no sign-up wall, no watermark, and nothing kept: close the tab and the session is over.
Don't take our word for it — watch
Before you use any online PDF tool, including this one, press F12 to open your browser's developer tools and click the Network tab. Then do the job. An upload is not subtle: you would see the request, the number of megabytes, and the address it went to. On our browser-side tools you will see the page and its code load, and then nothing further while your document is worked on.
This is the test worth applying to every site you are about to hand a contract, a payslip or a medical form to. It takes ten seconds and it replaces a promise with a fact.
The two that do send it, and why
A browser cannot perform real PDF encryption, so password-protecting a PDF and unlocking one cannot be done in one. Those two send your file to our server. Both pages say so on themselves, before you use them, rather than in a policy you would have to go looking for.
What happens to it: the file travels over an encrypted connection, qpdf applies AES-256 or removes the existing encryption, and the result comes straight back to you. The temporary copy is deleted as soon as the result is returned — in a cleanup step that runs even when the job fails, so there is no path that leaves a file behind. It is never written to a database. The password you type is used and never recorded, not in storage and not in a log.
What we do collect
Our web server keeps ordinary request logs: your IP address, the page, the time and the browser you used. That is how faults and abuse get noticed, and it is what every web server on the internet does.
Because the free tools run on your computer, we would otherwise have no idea whether they worked, so the page sends us a short note about what happened — that a PDF was opened, roughly how big it was, how many pages, which tool was used, whether the download succeeded and the text of any error. It never sends the name of your file, and it never sends any part of its contents. That is a hard rule rather than a setting: the file is not there to send.
If you decide to keep documents here
An account is the one case where we do hold your work, because that is what the account is for — documents you can come back to, with their history. It is opt-in per document: nothing is stored unless you save it.
What protects it:
- Encrypted in transit, always. Every request is HTTPS, plain http is redirected to it, and we send HSTS with a one-year lifetime and includeSubDomains — after one visit your browser will not talk to us any other way.
- Your own account, and nobody else's. Documents are reachable only by you and by the people you explicitly share them with, checked on every request. Passwords are stored as salted PBKDF2-SHA256 hashes; we could not tell you your own password if you asked.
- A dedicated server, and a dedicated system account. Your files and the database are readable only by the application itself, not by anything else on the machine.
- Deletion that means it. Deleted documents wait thirty days in a bin so a mistake costs a click, then they are gone. Emptying the bin is immediate. Closing your account takes everything with it, and you can export your documents first.
- Backed up nightly, and the restore is tested — because a backup nobody has ever restored is a hope, not a backup.
We do not sell data, we do not use your documents to train anything, and we do not look at them — the terms say so in those words, and the privacy notice goes through it line by line.
Who is actually behind this
Brevard Creek Labs, LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company, in the United States. Everyone who works on docubend — the code, the servers, the support you would get if you wrote in — is a US citizen working in the United States. No part of it is outsourced or offshored, and no third party has access to your documents.
Still not sure? Talk to a person.
If your document is sensitive enough that a web page is not going to settle it, write to us and say so — we will get on a call or a video conference and walk you through exactly where your file goes, including showing you the network trace live if that is what would help.
That offer is not a sales call. Somebody who is careful about where their documents go has asked the right question, and it is a question we would rather answer properly once than have somebody guess at.
Questions
Do you see my file?
For fourteen of the sixteen tools, no — not the file, not its name, not one byte of it. The work runs in your browser, so there is nothing to send us. The two exceptions are password-protecting and unlocking a PDF, which no browser can do, and both of those pages say so on themselves before you use them.
How can I check that, rather than believing you?
Open your browser's developer tools before you start, go to the Network tab, and use the tool. An upload is not a subtle thing: you would see the request, its size and where it went. It is worth doing on any site you are about to hand a document to, including this one.
What happens on the two tools that do send the file?
It travels over TLS, qpdf encrypts or decrypts it on our server, the result comes straight back to you, and the temporary copy is deleted as soon as it is returned — in a finally block, so it happens even when the job fails. The password you type is used and never written down: not to a database, not to a log.
If I make an account, what do you keep?
Only what you save. A document you make or open in the workspace is stored so you can come back to it, along with its version history. You can delete any of it; deletions wait in a bin for thirty days so a mistake is a click to undo, and after that they are gone. Closing the account takes the lot.
Is my connection encrypted?
Yes. Everything is HTTPS, http requests are redirected to it, and the site sends HSTS with a one-year lifetime and includeSubDomains — so after your first visit your browser refuses to talk to us any other way. Passwords are stored as salted PBKDF2-SHA256 hashes, never as text.
Who works on this, and where are they?
Brevard Creek Labs, LLC, in North Carolina. Everyone who touches the code or the servers is a US citizen working in the United States. No part of it is outsourced or offshored, and no third party has access to your documents.
I have a question this page does not answer.
Ask, and if it is easier to talk it through, we will get on a call or a video conference with you. That offer is real and it is not a sales call — somebody who is careful about where their documents go is exactly the customer we want.