The short version: your files never leave your device. PDkef has no server that receives, stores, or processes the PDFs you work with. Every tool, merge, sign, split, compress, edit pages, convert, redact, unlock, or protect, runs in your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly, the same way a desktop app would. There is no upload step to skip; there is nothing to upload to.
No accounts, no cookies
PDkef does not ask you to sign up, log in, or create an account, and it does not use cookies. Nothing about your visit is tied to an identity.
What is measured, and what is not
PDkef uses same-origin Vercel Web Analytics for basic, aggregate page views, the same category of measurement a paper counter at a doorway would give you: how many visits a page got, not who made them.
Separately, PDkef sends anonymous, sanitized maintenance telemetry, things like which tool ran, whether it succeeded, and a coded error category, so bugs can be found and fixed. That allowlist explicitly excludes anything that could identify you or your document: no filenames, no text you typed, no signatures, no document or user IDs, and no raw error payloads. This telemetry exists purely to keep the tools working; it is never used to build a profile of you, and it never blocks a tool from working offline.
Drafts and local storage
The Sign and Redact tools can save a draft of your work in progress so you do not lose it if a tab closes. That draft, the source PDF and your edits, is stored in your browser's own IndexedDB storage on your device, with an automatic 14-day expiry. It is never uploaded anywhere.
A technical backstop, not just a promise
These are not just policy statements: PDkef ships a strict Content-Security-Policy that locks connect-src down to the site's own origin, so the browser itself blocks any script from sending data to a third-party server, even if a future bug tried to add one by accident.
Because PDkef is open source, none of this has to be taken on trust: you can read the exact code that runs on your device, including this policy, for yourself. Questions about any of this are welcome on the contact page.