Privacy Policy
Last updated: 26 October 2026
maskyourdocs exists so you can take personal details out of a document without handing the document to anyone, including us. This page explains what the site does and doesn't collect.
The short version
- Your documents are opened, redacted and exported entirely in your browser. They are never uploaded, and we never see them.
- When you open a file, we record its type and size and some facts about your device, but never its name or contents.
- We use Google Analytics and Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits, and Google AdSense to show ads. Google uses cookies for both.
Your documents
When you open a PDF, Word file, image or text file on maskyourdocs.com/mask, it is read by code running in your browser tab. Rendering, marking, exporting and checking the result all happen on your device. There is no server the file is sent to, and the site's security policy blocks the page from sending data anywhere except the services named on this page, none of which is given your document.
Nothing from your document is saved: not in your browser's storage, not as a "recent files" list, not in any URL or page title. Closing the tab discards it. Once the site has loaded, you can disconnect from the internet and it still works.
What we record when you open a file
To learn which file types and devices to support, the site sends one small event to our server each time a file is opened. It contains:
- the file's extension (such as pdf), the kind of file, and its size
- your browser, operating system, device type and, where your browser provides it, device model
- screen size, whether you're using touch or a mouse, your browser language and time zone
- the website that linked you here, if any (the site name only, not the full address)
- an approximate location (country, region, city, postal code) and network provider, worked out by Cloudflare from your IP address
It never contains the file's name or any of its contents. Your IP address and your browser's full User-Agent string are not stored. These events are kept in Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine, which currently deletes them after three months.
Visitor counter
The home page shows how many people are online and how many visited in the last 30 days. To count you without identifying you, each open page checks in about once a minute. Our server turns your IP address and browser string into a short one-way code, mixed with a random value that is replaced every day, and keeps only that code. The IP address and browser string themselves are not stored. Because the random value changes daily and the old one is deleted, today's code can't be linked to yesterday's. Codes are kept for 30 days.
Analytics
We use two services to understand how the site is used: which pages are visited, from where, and on what kind of device.
- Google Analytics sets cookies and receives the page address and title, plus information about your browser, device and approximate location. See Google's Privacy Policy. You can opt out with Google's Analytics opt-out add-on.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views without cookies. See Cloudflare's Privacy Policy.
Neither service receives anything from your documents. The masking page never puts a file name in its address or title.
Advertising
The site is free and is paid for by ads served by Google AdSense.
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your previous visits to this site and other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
- You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info.
Ads are shown in frames loaded from Google's servers, which the rest of the page can't read into. Google never receives your documents. Learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services. If you visit from the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland, Google may ask for your consent before using cookies for ads.
Cookies and local storage
The site itself sets no cookies. Google Analytics and Google AdSense set their own, as described above. The site stores three small preferences in your browser's local storage, none of which contains anything from a document:
maskyourdocs-theme: light or dark modemaskyourdocs-tour: that you've seen the quick tourmaskyourdocs-badge: where you dragged the "Built by" badge
A service worker also stores the site's own code in your browser so it loads offline. You can clear all of this from your browser's site settings at any time.
Hosting
The site is hosted on Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes your IP address to deliver pages and protect the site from abuse. Requests to our two small endpoints (the file event and the visitor counter) are logged by Cloudflare for troubleshooting and kept for a few days.
Children
The site isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information about them.
Your choices
You can block cookies and analytics with your browser settings or a content blocker, and the redaction tool will keep working. Because we don't store anything that identifies you, we can't look up, export or delete records about a particular person. If you have a question about your data, contact us.
Changes
If what the site collects changes, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change with it.