The Privacy Problem with Online PDF Tools (and How I Fixed It)

Last year I needed to merge two PDFs before sending them to my landlord. I Googled "merge PDF online," clicked the first result, and uploaded my lease agreement and bank statement to some random website. Then I thought about what I'd just done. I'd handed a stranger my full legal name, address, bank account number, and monthly income. The site's privacy policy was 4,000 words of legalese that boiled down to "we can do whatever we want with your data." That bugged me enough to build my own PDF tools. They run entirely in the browser. Your files never touch a server. How Bad Is It, Really? I tested the top 10 PDF tools from Google search results. Here's what I found: 8 out of 10 upload your file to their server for processing 3 store files for "up to 24 hours" (their words) 2 had privacy policies that allowed sharing data with "partners" 1 didn't even have HTTPS on the upload endpoint (yikes) Think about the kinds of documents people put through PDF tools: Legal: contracts, NDAs, court f