Privacy Policy
Last updated 29 August 2026 · PDFlare is a product of NextGenOmni
Privacy is the product's core design constraint, so this policy is short — there is very little to disclose.
- Your documents never leave your machine. All PDF processing runs locally. There is no upload code path, no cloud storage, no AI service.
- The app's only network traffic is (a) licence activation, a lightweight daily licence check-in, and the device-list and deactivation calls you trigger yourself, and (b) an update check. It talks to one host and no other. That is the complete list — verify it behind a firewall or packet sniffer.
- No analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, no ads, no data sales.
- No account is required — just a licence key.
What the app sends, exactly
1. Licence activation. When you activate your key, the app sends: your licence key; SHA-256 hashes of up to three hardware identifiers — never the raw identifiers (the hashing happens on your machine, the raw values are wiped from memory as soon as they are hashed, and every hash is namespaced to PDFlare, so the same computer produces a completely different hash in any other product); your operating system and OS version; the device name you chose; and the app version.
2. Licence check-in. The daily background check-in sends less: your licence key and the same hardware hashes, and nothing else. It exists so licence upgrades reach you and so a refunded key can be revoked. Missing it — indefinitely — never disables the app.
3. The device list and deactivation. When you open the list of your activated devices, the app sends your licence key. When you sign a device out, it sends your licence key and the hash of that device.
4. Update check. The app asks our server whether a newer version exists, sending your operating system, CPU architecture, update channel, and the version you are currently running. No licence key, no hardware hashes, no document data.
Every one of those requests also carries the app's version string in its User-Agent header and, as with any request to any server, your IP address. That is the full list.
What is never sent: your documents, their contents, their filenames, raw hardware identifiers, usage data, or anything else not listed above.
What we store on our servers
- Licence record: your key, tier, device allowance, status, purchase source, and the email address from your purchase.
- Device records: per activated device, the hashed fingerprint components, your chosen device name, OS and OS version, app version, and activation / last-seen timestamps. These power the self-service device list in the app.
- Order record: purchase date, amount, currency, country, email, and the payment processor's own reference for the transaction (the Stripe checkout session and payment-intent ids, or the AppSumo order id) — what we need for accounting, tax, and honouring the 60-day refund.
Payments
Direct purchases are processed by Stripe; AppSumo purchases by AppSumo. Your card details go to the payment processor, not to us — we never receive or store card numbers. Stripe and AppSumo handle your payment data under their own privacy policies.
Server logs
Like any internet service, our licence server sees the IP address of every request and uses it for rate limiting and abuse prevention.
The licence server writes one line per request — method, path, IP address, status code, and how long it took. Those lines are not stored. The server runs on Cloudflare Pages Functions, where log output exists only in a live stream that somebody has to have open at the moment the request happens; there is no log file, no log database, and no log export switched on. So there is no retention period to quote: nothing accumulates, and there is nothing for us to rotate or delete.
Cloudflare separately keeps aggregate counters for the service — number of requests, error rate, how long they took — for up to three months. Those are totals with no IP addresses and no per-request records. As the operator of the network your request travels over, Cloudflare also handles request metadata as our infrastructure provider, under its own terms.
Your licence key never appears in a URL. Every call the app makes that carries your key is a POST with the key in the request body, so it cannot land in a URL log. Two purchase-lookup pages do pass a one-time credential in a query string (an AppSumo redemption code, or a Stripe checkout session id); the server strips the query off those before it writes its log line.
Where your data is held
The licence database is hosted by Cloudflare in the United States (their eastern North America region). If you are in the UK or the EEA, that is an international transfer, and Cloudflare acts as our processor for it.
Your rights
- Erasure (GDPR Art. 17 and similar laws): email us and we erase your personal data — your email address is blanked from licence and order records. We retain the resulting pseudonymous licence record (key, tier, hashed fingerprints) so your purchase keeps working; it no longer identifies you. The erasure is immediate in the live database and ages out of our automatic backup window within a week (see Retention).
- Access: ask and we will tell you what we hold about you (it is the short list above).
- Deactivation: you can remove any device from your licence yourself, in the app.
- If you believe we have mishandled your data you can complain to your local data protection authority; we would appreciate the chance to fix it first.
Retention
Licence records are kept for as long as the licence exists — it is perpetual, so honouring it requires keeping the (pseudonymised, on request) record. Order records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires.
The database platform keeps a rolling point-in-time restore window of the last 7 days. It is always on and we cannot shorten or switch it off, so anything we delete or blank remains recoverable from that backup for up to a week before it ages out for good.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the new version is published here and with the app; we will not weaken the core promises above — the product exists because of them.
Questions or requests: support@nextgenomni.com