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. That distinction is the entire reason this tool exists in the form it does.

How to check that

You should not have to take that on trust, so the site is built to be checkable in about thirty seconds by anyone with a browser.

Open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab, and paste two versions into the tool. You will see no request carrying your text, because the page is served with a Content-Security-Policy whose connect-src is 'self' — the page is structurally incapable of contacting another origin, and any attempt to would be blocked by the browser and logged as a violation in the console. You can read the policy yourself in the response headers for the page.

The same policy is why the site loads no fonts, no scripts and no images from anywhere else. Everything the page needs comes from this domain.

There is a simpler test than any of that, and it is decisive: load the page, turn off your wi-fi, and use the tool. It still works, because the comparison happens on your machine. A longer piece on how to check this for any online tool sets out what the checks do and do not prove.

Analytics

The site uses Fathom Analytics to count page views and a small number of events. Fathom does not use cookies and does not build a profile of you across websites.

The Fathom script is served from this domain rather than from Fathom's own servers, and the measurements it sends are forwarded on by this site. One consequence is worth stating plainly: Fathom never sees your IP address — it sees this site's server instead. That makes Fathom's count of unique visitors less accurate, which is a trade I am happy to make.

Five events exist. Each one is a name, and nothing else is attached to it:

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

No counts, word lengths, timings, settings or content are ever attached to an event. A change count would be a small thing to send, but it is still derived from what you pasted, and a privacy claim is worth what its strictest reading is worth. The Comparison run event fires once per visit rather than on every comparison for the same reason: firing repeatedly would describe how fast you type and how long you pause, which is a fact about your document even though no part of it is transmitted.

The feedback form

The feedback form is the one place in this product that deliberately sends something you typed. 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.

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 an email address you typed into the feedback form, and the message you sent with it. 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.