Privacy

The text you compare

There is no upload. There is no server that receives your text, because there is no server-side processing of it at all: the comparison engine is JavaScript that your browser downloaded once and runs locally. Nothing is written to a database, a file, or your browser's own storage. There is no account to create, so there is nothing for a document to be attached to.

This is not a promise about how carefully something is handled after it is received. It is a statement that it is never received.

You are welcome to check that rather than take it on trust: load the page, turn off your wi-fi and the tool still works, and if you would rather watch it directly, your browser's developer tools will show nothing carrying your text leaving the page. A longer piece on how to check this for any online tool sets out what those checks do and do not prove.

Analytics

The site uses Fathom Analytics to count page views and a small number of events. It also measures how long a page was open and sends that on when you leave it — a duration, and nothing else. Fathom does not use cookies and does not build a profile of you across websites. The link above is a referral link: if you sign up through it, I receive a credit from Fathom.

The script loads from Fathom's own servers, so your browser contacts cdn.usefathom.com directly and the measurements go there rather than here. That means Fathom receives your IP address, as any server you contact does. It uses that address to work out whether you have been counted already today, by combining it with your browser's user-agent into a one-way hash under a key that is replaced every night. What Fathom stores is that hash. It is not reversible, and there is no version of it that can be pointed back at you.

This site used to proxy the script and forward the measurements on, so that your browser only ever contacted this domain. That is gone. It rested on undocumented behaviour in Fathom's script that could stop working without warning, and the address reached Fathom either way — forwarded by this site instead of sent by your browser. Going directly is the arrangement Fathom supports, and it is the one you can check: the request is right there in your browser's network tab, and you can read what it carried.

Five events exist. Each sends its name, alongside the same details every page view carries — which page you were on, where you arrived from, and any campaign parameters in the address:

• Comparison run — once per visit, the first time a comparison finds a change.
• Copy redline — the redline was copied.
• Copy tracked changes — the tracked-changes version was copied.
• Copy revised — the revised text was copied.
• Copy plain text — the plain-text version was copied.

Nothing is attached beyond that: no counts, no timings, no settings, and no part of your text or anything derived from it. Comparison run fires once per visit rather than on every comparison, so the events say nothing about how you work either. You can confirm all of this by opening the network tab and reading a request — every parameter it carries is in plain sight.

The feedback form

The feedback form is the first of the two places in this product that deliberately send something you typed — the desktop waiting list below is the other. It is kept on its own page, well away from the tool, and it is never blurred with it.

When you submit it, the message you wrote — and your email address, if you chose to give one — is sent to a mailbox I read. Nothing else goes with it: not the text in the tool, not what you were comparing, not a referrer, not a fingerprint. If you leave the email field blank, the message is genuinely anonymous and I have no way to reply.

That page differs from the rest of the site in two ways, and both are disclosed on the page itself. It loads Cloudflare Turnstile, a bot check, from Cloudflare's servers; Turnstile runs in your browser and may store a short-lived token there as part of the check. And it submits to this site's server, which sends the message on by email using Cloudflare's email service, to a mailbox hosted by Zoho.

Messages are kept in that mailbox for as long as they are useful, which in practice means until whatever they reported is fixed or declined. If you want a message deleted, say so and I will delete it.

The desktop waiting list

The desktop page has a form that asks for your email address, so that you can be told when there is a desktop application to install. It is the second and last place on this site that deliberately sends something you typed.

Four things go with it, and they are the four the form asks for: your address, which of Windows or macOS you said you run, whether you ticked the box about trying an early version, and whatever you wrote in the optional line about what you need. Nothing else — not the text in the tool, not what you were comparing, not a referrer, not a fingerprint. That page loads Cloudflare Turnstile and submits to this site's server in exactly the way the feedback form does, described above.

There is no list. Your submission is sent to the same mailbox the feedback form reaches and is not written to a database, a file or anything else. That is a deliberate choice and it has a cost, which is that "everyone on the list" is a folder of messages rather than a table — but it means an address you gave for one purpose is not sitting in a store waiting to be used for another.

The basis is your consent, which you give by filling the form in, and the purpose is limited to what the page says it is: at most a handful of messages, about the desktop application, and nothing else. No newsletter, no product marketing, and your address is never sold, shared or passed to anyone. There is no confirmation email, so the first thing you hear from us will be the thing you asked to hear about.

You can withdraw at any time by replying to any message you get, or by writing to support@redlinepad.com, and I will delete what there is. If the desktop application is not built, the messages are deleted and nobody is written to.

Hosting and server logs

The site is hosted on Cloudflare. Like any host, Cloudflare processes the technical details of a request — the IP address it came from, the browser's user-agent string, the page requested — in order to serve it and to protect against abuse. That happens for every website you visit, and it applies to the request for the page, never to the text you paste into it.

I do not collect, export or store those logs myself, and nothing in them is linked to anything else. Cloudflare's own handling is described in their documentation.

Cookies and storage

Redline Pad sets no cookies and there is no cookie banner, because there is nothing to consent to. Your settings — the view, the comparison options, the colour scheme — are held in memory only and are gone when you close the tab. Deliberately: "nothing stored" is easier to verify and harder to erode than "stored, but only a little".

The single exception is the bot check on the feedback page, described above, which is Cloudflare's and applies only to that page.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection and portability over personal data held about you. In practice the only personal data this site can hold is what you typed into one of its two forms: a message and an optional address on the feedback form, or an address and three answers on the desktop waiting list. Both reach the same mailbox and neither is stored anywhere else. Ask, and I will tell you what there is or delete it.

Redline Pad is operated by an independent developer based in Sweden, who is the data controller for the purposes of the GDPR. The feedback form reaches me, and so does support@redlinepad.com. If you need the controller's name and address — to make a request, or to complain to a supervisory authority — ask, and I will give them to you.

Changes to this page

If this page ever has to say something materially different — a new third party, a new event, anything at all that leaves your browser — the change will be made here first, and the date at the top will say when. The claim at the top of this page is the product; it will not be quietly narrowed.